
Class JrD\/a'3^d 
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FRESENTIil) l!Y fd A ^ 



PROCEEDINGS 



OF THE 



Ninety-Seventh Annual Meeting 



OF THE 



American Board of Commissioners 

FOR FOREIGN MISSIONS 
October 9-12, 1906 



1 



^m^ 







Thompson Memorial Chapel. 
(At Williams College.) 



^' ^ ' 4 ^- ■ ' i 






'•■O' 



THE 
ONE HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY 

OF THE 

HAYSTACK PRAYER MEETING 

CELEBRATED AT THE 

Ninety^-Seyenth Annual Meeting 

OF THE 

AMERICAN BOARD 

IN NORTH ADAMS 

And by the Haystack Centennial Meetings 

AT Williamstown, Mass. 

October 9-12 

1906 



BOSTON 

American Board of Commissioners 

FOR Foreign Missions 

1907 



ISiblishor 






A^;<=\o^ 



^ 



DEDICATION 



m HONORED MEMOPvY OF 

Samuel J. Mills axd His Companions of the Haystack 

and of all who have 

labored with the american board 

for the extension of 

Christ's Kingdom on Earth 

We now dedicate this volume to 

Their Heirs and Successors" 
IN the Great Work of 
World Evangelization 

1806 - 1906 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



Introduction, including: page. 

Significance of the Occasion 1 

Acknowledgments 2 

i Historical Statement 3 

Services of Tuesday, October 9. 

Notice of Opening Ser\dce 7 

Address of Welcome, by his Honor Marshall R. Ford 8 

Response, by President Samuel B. Capen, LL.D 9 

Extracts from Reports ; of the Treasurer, Frank H. Wiggin . . 11 

Home Secretar}^, Rev. Cornelius H. Patton, D.D 14 

Foreign Secretary, \\nth Annual Survey of the Field, Rev. James 

L. Barton, D.D 18 

Department for Young People and Education, Associate Secre- 
tary Harry W. Hicks 33 

The Rismg Tide. Address by Rev. William S. Dodd, M.D. ... 39 
Present Opportunity in Micronesia. Address by Rev. Irving M. 

Channon 43 

Tuesday Evening Service. 

Annual Sermon, by Rev. George A. Gates, D.D 45 

Services of the Haystack Centennial Day, Wednesday, 

October 10. 

Introductory Notice 59 

Mission Study Class Methods. Address by Mr. T. H. P. Sailer, Ph.D. 60 

Notice of Morning Sessions 62 

Academic Service in Thompson Memorial Chapel. 

Address of Welcome, by President Henry Hopkins, D.D 63 

Response, by President Samuel B. Capen, LL.D 66 

The New Premises and the Old Conclusions. Address by President 

William DeWitt Hyde, D.D 68 

A Missionary Centur5^ Address by President William J. Tucker, 

D.D 72 

The Evangelization of the World, the Essential Condition of Ameri- 
can Christianity. Address by Rev. Edward Judson, D.D. . . 78 
Student Volunteer Service. 

Notice of the Meeting 84 

New Motives and Changed Purposes in Missions. Address by Rev. 

John Hopkins Denison 84 

The Significance of this Anniversary. Address by Rev. Newell 

Dwaght HiUis, D.D ' 94 

The Price of Missionary Success. Summary of Address by Rev. 

Samuel M. Zwemer, D.D.. 104 



Vlll CONTENTS. 

PAGE. 
Wednesday Afternoon, Mission Park Service. * 

Notice of Open-Air Service 105 

Opening Address by Hon. Samuel B. Capen, LL.D 108 

The Future of Missionary Work. Address by Rev. Arthur Judson 

Brown, D.D HO 

Brief Addresses by Native Christians from the Foreign Mission 

Fields 124-142 

Arnold Sidobe Hiwale, of India 124 

Henry M. Hoisington Kulasinghe, of Ceylon 127 

Akaiko Akana, of Hawaii 128 

Fei Chi Hao, of China 129 

H. H. K'ung, of China 131 

Rev. Oscar M. Chamberlain, of Turkey 133 

Stephen ka Ndunge Gumede, of South Africa 135 

Rev. S. Sato, of Japan 138 

Rev. Philip Reitinger, of Bohemia 139 

Senor Frederic R. Ponce, of Mexico 142 

Thank Offering and Prayer Meeting 143 

^^ The Men of the Haystack the Forerunners of the Student Volunteer 

Movement. Address by Luther D. Wishard 143' 

Wednesday Evening Sessions. 
Notice of Services - 149 

Williamstown Congregational Church. 
'The Hospital in Cesarea. Address by Rev. William S. Dodd, 

M.D., of Western Turkey ., 150 

The American College, Madura, and the Conquest of an Empire. 

Address by President William M, Zumbro 155 

Christian Missions in Turkey. Address by Rev. Stephen Van 

R. Trowbridge 160 

North Adams Methodist Church. 

Changes within the Century in Foreign Missionary Theory and 

Practice. Address by President Henry C. King, D.D. . . . 163 

Memorial from the Armenian Evangelical Alliance 177 

The Message of the Haystack Men to the Church of Today. 

Address by Rev. Henry E. Cobb, D.D 179 

North Adams Baptist Church. 

The Kind of Young Men and Women Needed for the Mission 

Field. Address by Rev. Francis E. Clark, D.D 185 

The Vision of the Haystack Band Realized by the Students of 

this Generation. Address by Mr. John R. Mott -187 

The Missionary Challenge to the Students of this Generation. 

Address by Prof. Harlan P. Beach 200 

North Adams Congregational Church. 

Haystack Men in the Ministry. Address by Rev. Charles O. 

Day, D.D 210 

The Hero of the Haystack. An Illustrated Lecture by Rev. 

Thomas C. Richards . 214 



CONTENTS. IX 

PAGE. 

Services of Thursday, October 11. 
Morning Service. 

Notice of the Session 221 

Opening Address by Rev. George F. Pentecost, D.D 221 

Greeting from the United Brethren in Christ. Address by Bishop 

WiUiam M. Bell, D.D 223 

Greeting from the Methodist Protestants. Address by Rev. T. J. 

Ogburn, D.D 227 

Response to the Greetings. By Rev. Edward C. Moore, D.D. . . 232 
Report by the Committee on the Report of the Foreign Depart- 
ment. Read by Rev. George H. Ewing 234 

The Work of the Foreign Department. Address by Rev. Raymond 

Calkms 235 

The West Central Africa Mission. Address by Rev. Walter T. 

Currie 245 

Report by the Committee on the Report of the Home Department, 250 

and Address on the Work of the Home Department, by Rev. 

Robert W. McLaughlin, D.D 252 

Report by the Committee on the Treasurer's Report, Mr. Joshua 

W. Davis , 255 

Afternoon Service. 

Notice of the Business Session, with the most important of the 

Resolutions 260 

Discussion of the Future Policy of the Board at Home. Partici- 
pated in by Rev. Lyman Abbott, D.D 262 

Rev. Charles C. Creegan, D.D 268 

Rev. A. N. Hitchcock, Ph.D 273 

Rev. H. Melville Tenney 277 

Evening Services. 

Notice of the Meetings 280 

The Evangelization of the Mohammedan World in this Genera- 
tion. Address by Rev. Samuel M. Zwemer, D.D 281 

Moslems in Turkey. Address by Rev. James L. Barton, D.D. . . 289 

India's MiUions for Christ. Address by Rev. Henry G. Bissell . . 297 

Messages from the Marathi Missionaries and Native Christians . 309 

Service of Friday, October 12. 

Notice of the Closing Session 313 

Address in Memory of Secretary Judson Smith, D.D., by Rex. 

Edward D. Eaton, D.D 316 

How the Gospel Works among the Zulus. Address by Rev. Fred- 
erick B. Bridgman 319 

A Plea for the Medical Work in China. Address by Rev. H. N. 

Kinnear, M.D 324 

The Work and the Missionary. Address by Rev. E. G. Tewksbury, 328 
Madura Mission and Its Work. Address by Rev. John S. Chandler, 335 
The Beauty of Ser\ace. Address by Rev. Robert Ernest Hume . 342 



X CONTENTS. 

PAGE. 

China Awakening. Address by Rev. James H. Roberts .... 344 
Closing Addresses, by Mr. C. Q. Richmond, for the Entertainment 

Committee 347 

Rev. W. E. Thompson, for the Methodist Church 348 

Rev. Theodore E. Busfield, D.D., for the Congregational 

Churches 350 

President Samuel B. Capen, LL.D., for the American Board . 353 

Indices : 

Speakers 357 

Titles of Addresses 359 

Mission Lands Referred to 363 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



PAGE. 

Thompson Memorial Chapel, Williams College, as Photographed / 

on October 10, 1906 Frontispiece 

Edge of Grove, wath Glimpse of the Haystack Monument , . Facing 62 

Site of the Mission Park Service of October 10 Facing 84 

One Third of the Audience at the Service in Mission Park, 

October 10 Facing 108 

President Capen and the Native Converts at the Haystack 

Monument Facing 124 ' 

Ordination of the First American Foreign Missionaries (Nott, 

Judson, Hall, Newell, and Rice), at the Tabernacle Church, / 

Salem, February 6, 1811 Facing 214 

Williamstown Valley, from the River Facing 260 

Rev. Judson Smith, D.D., Foreign Secretary of the Board from 

1884-1906 Facmg 316 ' 



INTRODUCTION. 



SIGNIFICANCE OF THE OCCASION. 

The great missionary advance of the past century began with 
several simultaneous movements, so far as New England is con- 
cerned. The old " Societies for the Propagation of the Gospel " 
were moribund in the last decades of the eighteenth century. 
The churches, with all their religious activities, had suffered from 
the blight of post-revolutionary skepticism. Their awakening 
came at the end of the century through the renewal of the mission- 
ary impulse at Yale and other colleges, in the Connecticut Minis- 
terial Association, and in similar bodies of other states. 

Probably the most important of these new centers of mis- 
sionary growth was that created in Williamstow^n, by the intense 
conviction and unfaltering purpose inspired by God's Spirit in the 
heart of Samuel J. Mills. The Haystack Prayer Meeting of 1806 
was not the origin, but rather furnished the occasion for his true 
missionary purpose to express itself and to make deep and abid- 
ing impressions upon the life and purposes of other men. 

If John R. Mott is right in defining a leader as " one who 
knows the way, can keep ahead, and can get others to follow 
him," then the Providence of God has given conspicuous place 
among church leaders to this modest, self-effacing, inconspicuous 
youth who never thought of himself as a pioneer. He was intent 
upon persuading Christians to do their whole duty, that was all. 
He would have been in hearty accord with the thought uttered 
one hundred years after the thunderstorm meeting in a missionary 
assembly at Silver Bay, — ''When Christianity possesses Chris- 
tians, it will possess the world." 

It is singularly fitting that the most powerful annual meeting 
of our great missionary organization should have been held where 
it could bear witness to the correctness of Mills' position. Success 
in the raising of one million dollars in a single year for the w^ork 
of the American Board, and a parallel success in the spiritual work 
upon the mission fields abroad, w^ere joyfully celebrated within 



2 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

sight of old Greylock, in that same college, '^ beautiful for situ- 
ation," in which Mills had long ago looked '^ unto the hills, unto 
God, whence cometh help." 

The practice and the power of prayer are abundantly evidenced 
by this Centennial. Because Mills and his friends were in the 
habit of meeting often in that grove, they sought retirement there 
on that day in the month of August, 1806. Because they cherished 
such opportunities they were not ready to give them up upon a 
slight pretext. Because they trusted Him who rode upon the 
storm, the thunder had no terrifying effect upon them, but spoke 
of the power given to those who had no strength. 

What the discovery of Franklin was to the physical and indus- 
trial world in opening the way to new developments, as he drew 
the electrical spark from the midst of those flashing thunder 
clouds, that was the contact of Mills with the power of God's 
Spirit to the spiritual and ecclesiastical world. His utterance, 
" We can do it if we will," was the spark that showed great sup- 
plies of spiritual reserve power in God and man. Those inex- 
haustible reserves of power were not fully understood and were 
being little drawn upon at that time, but they have shown by the 
results achieved in one hundred years what limitless achieve- 
ments are possible in the great task of bringing the world to 
Christ. 

The impression made by such meetings as those held at North 
Adams and Williamstown is like the impression of a visit to the 
power house of some great electric system. In order to put those 
impressions within the reach of all who are in sj^mpathy with the 
world-wide work of missions, this volume is prepared. 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. 

For the use of some of the cuts contained in the souvenir pam- 
phlet provided at Williamstown under the title of " The Hay- 
stack Prayer Meeting," the Board is indebted to the courtesy of 
Rev. F. T. Clayton, chairman of the Souvenir Program Committee. 

The completeness of the arrangements made for the holding of 
the meetings and for entertainment of members of the Board, 
and of many other visitors, is due to the hard work and efficient 
cooperation of the following local committees, with the officers 
and committees of the Board : 



INTRODUCTION. 6 

NORTH ADAMS COMMITTEES. 
General Chairman, Theodore E. Busfield, D.D. 

Finance. — D. J. Barber, Chairman; T. W. Sykes, C. H. Cutting. 

Entertainment. — C. Q. Richmond, Chairman; George French, Mrs. H. E. 
Wetherbee, Mrs. George W. Chase. 

Arrangements. — George W. Chase, Chairman; W. F. Darby, Mrs. C. H. 
Cutting. 

Railroad. — F, E. Carlisle, Chairman; H. E. Wetherbee. 

Welcome. — Jesse B. Spruill. 

Program, — James E. Hunter, Chairman; Mrs. J. C. Goodrich. 

WILLIAMSTOWN COMMITTEES. 
General Committee. — Leverett Mears, Chairman; Miss Grace Perry, 
Secretary. 

Finance. — G. B, Waterman, Chairman. 

Entertainment. — E. M. Lewis, Chairman. 

Luncheon. — Mrs. Botsford, Chairman. 

Souvenir Program. — F. T. Clayton, Chairman. 

Reception. — Leverett Mears, Chairman. 

Exercises and Meetings. — Henrj^ Hopkins, Chairman. 

ADAMS COMMITTEE. 
F. E. Mole, Chairman. 

Recognition should also be given to the publishers of the North 
Adams Transcript, for issuing a full report of the meetings and 
addresses. Through the aid of Rev. James H. Ross, who edited 
the proceedings for the press, and of the special stenographer, 
Rev. W. H. Gleason, the meetings were more completely reported 
than usual, and the North Adams Transcript deserved the success 
it met with in circulating some twenty-two thousand copies of its 
special edition. 

Rev. H. E. Peabody, of Hartford, and Rev. Thomas C. Richards, 
of Warren, whose biography of Mills should be read in connection 
with this volume, have helped in preparing the notices of the 
meetings. 



HISTORICAL STATEMENT. 

Let us now go back for a moment to the year 1806. A revival 
in the village of Williamstown had preceded and prepared for an 
awakening among the college students. A devout woman, Mrs. 
Bardwell, had asked some of them to hold prayer meetings in her 
house six months before Samuel J. Mills entered college, but it 



4 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

was the impulse that he brought with him from a similar revival 
in his own home in Litchfield County that gave a special mis- 
sionary turn to this new awakening. Twice a week he was in 
the habit of meeting with other students for prayer, out of doors. 
On Saturdays the place was in a grove near the college. One 
Saturday in August, Mills' prayer group of five students was 
driven from the shelter of this grove by a thunderstorm. They 
sought refuge from the driving rain on the lee side of a great hay- 
stack, open to the sky, but shielded from wind and rain. Their 
conversation and prayers continued. They had studied Asia in the 
class room. Now they talked of Asia's need of spiritual enlight- 
enment. Mills declared that they must send the gospel to those 
Orientals. They were all agreed with him except one, who held 
that civilization must precede Christianity. In order that they 
might become united in purpose, they knelt again in prayer while 
" the dark clouds were going and the clear sky coming." Because 
of that meeting clouds of human indifference were rolled by, that 
the sunshine of God's love in Christ might '^ touch and glance on 
every land." 

Before leaving college, Mills organized a secret society whose 
aim was '' to effect, in the persons of its members, a mission' 
to the heathen." It was distinguished by no Greek letter name, 
but known to insiders simply as '' Brethren." They did not wish 
to jeopardize the missionary beginnings by undue pretension or 
publicity. 

Richards went with Mills to Andover Seminary, while the 
others. Bobbins and Loomis, prepared for the ministry elsewhere. 
While he was still at Andover Seminary, he joined with others of 
like purpose there in urging the churches to appoint as foreign 
missionaries several students who had expressed their desire to 
go abroad. There was then no American Society of Foreign 
Missions to employ them, but as a result of this appeal the General 
Association of Massachusetts appointed a Board of Commissioners 
for Foreign Missions in the year 1810. This was the beginning of 
the American Board. For his later life and achievements, we 
must refer the reader to his biography. 

His services in the generation of missionary purpose among the 
churches were inestimable. It is a just tribute to Mills and his 
companions that the Haystack Monument' bears this inscription, 
'' The Birthplace of American Foreign Missions." 



SERVICES OF THE FIRST DAY, 

Tuesday, October 9, 1906, 
AT NORTH ADAMS. 



'^ Come, let us make it a subject of prayer under the Haystack, 
while the dark clouds are going, and the clear sky is coming/' 

SAMUEL J. :\IILLS. 



THE SECRET OF STRENGTH. 
In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength. — Isaiah 30 : 15. 

In quietness pursue thy way, 

Though mingling with the hurrying crowd; 

Naught shall thy steadfast soul dismay — 
Not threatening ills, nor clamors loud^ — 

For thou within thy heart mayst seek 

The stillness wherein God shall speak. 

In confidence thy task be wrought, 

With purpose true, unselfish, high. 
The Master knoweth all thy thought 

And his the power thy work to try. * 
Judged not by failure or success 
He shall approve thy faithfulness. 

And so the strength for every need 

Shall come to thee through all thy days; 
■ And so shall e'en the simplest deed 
Be consecrated to his praise, 
And thou retain 'mid^earthly strife 
The cahn, the peace, the joy of life. 

— Jessie Foksyth. 



OPENING SERVICES. 



OPENING SERVICES. 



The first sessions of the ninety-seventh annual meeting of 
the American Board were held in North Adams. Through the 
courtesy of the Methodists, their roomy house of worship accom- 
modated audiences which were very large from the start. Here, 
on Tuesday afternoon, October 9, was afforded shelter from a 
drizzling rain. Little time was given to preliminaries. After a 
devotional service and one brief but cordial address of welcome 
by Mayor Ford, with a response by President Capen, the business 
of the annual meeting was taken up. 

After the reading of minutes came the eagerly expected report 
of the treasurer, showing a very large increase in receipts over the 
preceding year, which had in its turn witnessed a marked advance 
over the year ending in 1904. 

The best piece of financial news, however, was reserved for the 
close of the report upon the Home Department. Secretary Patton 
said that after the accounts for the year were put in printed form 
the entire balance of the million dollars so earnestly sought had 
been raised and the debt was canceled thereby. After the hush 
of intense interest with which this announcement was received, 
there came an outburst of enthusiastic gratitude and joy. Long 
applause was followed by prayer in which Rev. Henry Hopkins, 
D.D., was the leader. 

Immediately after the close of this prayer an aged man started 
the singing of the doxology, in which nearly a thousand voices 
joined. Thus, at the very beginning of the sessions a new stage of 
progress was reached, a new boundary passed, and a new standard 
and ideal of achievement for coming years set up. 

The other reports and addresses of the afternoon showed prog- 
ress in work abroad, commensurate with the enlarged support at 
home. The international bearings of foreign missions were espe- 
cially brought out by Dr. Barton's annual survey, which is printed 
only in part in this volume, since it may be had in full in the issue 
of the Missionary Herald for November, 1906, which contains also 
the full report of the treasurer, Mr. Frank H. Wiggin. Secretary 
Patton's and Secretary Hicks' reports are published in separate 
form by the Board, and may be had upon application. Only 
extracts from them are included here. 



THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 



ADDRESS OF WELCOME. 
By Marshall R. Ford, Mayor of North Adams. 

Mr. Chairman, Corporate Members, Ladies and Gentlemen of the 
Foreign Board: I feel signally honored this afternoon to be privi- 
leged, as the chief executive of this city, to extend to you the most 
cordial greeting and welcome of her citizens. Your selection of 
this as the scene of your deliberations will always be considered 
a high compliment to our city and ourselves. Your choice is 
particularly appropriate for the observance of the one hundredth 
anniversary of the event which led to the foundation of your 
organization, since, within the shadow of these hills, it first took 
form. 

How well its founders builded is best understood by the remark- 
able growth and splendid results it has attained during its century- 
old existence. It is always a source of pleasure and pride to me 
to bid such gatherings welcome, and I wish now to do so in the 
most cordial manner possible. The freedom of the, city is yours, 
and I am sure our people will accord you generous treatment and 
cooperation during your stay. 

It is doubly pleasing to me to supplement the welcome of the 
city by that of the local Congregational society of which I have 
long had the honor of being a member. We, too, keenly appre- 
ciate the compliment of your presence, and I am fully warranted 
in guaranteeing you the most sincere and hearty cooperation of 
our minister and our members. 

Our church has always been deeply interested in all your 
activities, and mingles her welcome with her congratulations and 
best wishes. 

That your efforts may meet with a generous reward, and that 
your stay in our midst may be filled with pleasant things, is the 
wish of our church and our city. 



RESPONSE OF PRESIDENT CAPEN. 



RESPONSE. 

By Hon. Samuel B. Capen, LL.D., 
President of the American Board. 

Mr. Mayor and Members of the Committee: I wish to thank you 
on behalf of the American Board for this hearty welcome. I 
doubt if in all the past nearly one hundred years there has ever 
been held any meeting of the Board which has been looked for- 
ward to with so much eager expectation as this. It is to be an 
historic meeting, for it is the centennial of one of the greatest 
events in human history, measured by its results. For all the 
great labor involved in preparation for our coming, we are most 
grateful. 

Last year the American Board met for its annual meeting far 
away upon the Pacific coast, and thought of the marvelous 
changes that had occurred since the missionaries of the American 
Board did their great pioneer work in the northwest. The wilder- 
ness of their day has become an empire of prosperous states. 
But today we go further back in our thoughts to a little group of 
students in prayer under a haystack, the birthplace of foreign 
missions in America. 

Like all great things, the beginning of the foreign missionarj^ 
movement seemed so insignificant. It started when the religious 
conditions of our nation were almost at their worst. Religion was 
a subject of ridicule. The student life at Yale, Princeton, and 
Williams was permeated with skepticism. When the '^ Society 
of Brethren" was formed, in 1808, in order to prevent sneer and 
ridicule the constitution and records were written in cipher. 

A hundred years have gone by and what a change ! The Bible 
has been printed in over four hundred languages and dialects, 
and the missionaries of this Board have done much to make this 
possible. We have planted churches, schools, colleges, theological 
seminaries, hospitals, and printing presses. Jeremiah Evarts 
declared about eighty years ago that '^ some of us may live to 
see the time when the receipts of the Board shall be $10,000 a 
month! " How little did the leaders of his day realize what the 
growth was to be. At the semi-centennial in 1856, held at 
Williamstown, Secretary Rufus Anderson stated that the Board 
had at that time 420 missionaries and about 300 native helpers, 



10 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

and that the receipts for the first fifty years had been $6,800,000 . 
On this centennial year we have 565 missionaries, over 4,000 
native helpers, and the receipts for the past fifty years have been 
over $30,000,000. The report of this meeting will not be written 
in cipher. The whole world is interested in it, and what is said 
and done here will be known speedily in both continents. 

Wonderful things have been accomplished in the century that 
is now ended, and we are here to thank God for it all; the success 
is all his, not ours. But more than this, we are here to look into 
the future and to plan for larger things. We have prayed that 
this may be a great spiritual meeting. I doubt if any previous 
annual meeting has been prayed over in both hemispheres like 
this. The power of these young men of the haystack in their 
working with God came in answer to prayer, and we need to 
recognize more and more the same source of strength, Robert E. 
Speer has well said that " the evangelization of the world in this 
generation depends first of all upon a revival of prayer." Let 
us begin the new century where Mills and his associates began the 
last, — in earnest prayer to God. He can increase the gifts and bless 
them and the giver alike, multiplying their. power, till every man 
everywhere shall know of the cross and of Him who died to redeem 
the nations. Then shall the dream of the men of the haystack and 
the prayers they here offered be satisfied. Yea, more, even Christ, 
himself " shall see of the travail of his soul and shall be satisfied." 



EXTRACTS FROM REPORT OF TREASURER. 11 



EXTRACTS FROM THE REPORT OF THE TREASURER, 
FRANK H. WIGGIN, 

For the Year Ending August 31, 1906. 

The receipts of the Board have far exceeded those of any 
previous twelve months. They have come from 

Churches and individuals $450,856.29 

The Woman's Boards 246,239.95 

Sunday-schools and Y. P. S. C. E 19,217.66 

Receipts for special objects 51,519.81 

Legacies 124,145.17 

Interest 21,180.76 

The gain in gifts from living donors was $172,542.45. While 
the total receipts for 1905 were an increase over the previous 
year, the receipts for 1906 showed an increase of $161,008.89 over 
the receipts of 1905, and they reached altogether the sum of 
$913,159.64. 

The debt with which the year began was the largest in the 
Board's history. Much time and study were given by the Pru- 
dential Committee, the Finance Committee, and the officers, to 
the cost of every department of the work, and each item of 
expense was closely scrutinized. The appropriations for work 
on the field were not reduced, but were made on the same basis 
of expenditure as in recent years. The Morning Star, however, 
was retained at Honolulu, and, save in the case of missionaries 
supported by the Woman's Boards, no new missionary appoint- 
ments were made involving immediate expenditure. This resulted 
in a material reduction in the cost of outfits and traveling expenses 
of outward-bound new missionaries. The increase in the cost of 
agencies was due entirely to the expenses of the special campaign. 
The other expenses of this department, as well as those of Publi- 
cations, the Young People's Department, and the Shipping 
Department, were reduced. The cost of each of the missions 
appears in the printed tabulated statement. The total disburse- 
ments of the Board for the year were $853,680.88. The present 
debt of our Board is $85,417.39. 



12 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

SUMMARY OF RECEIPTS. 
Donations, as acknowledged in the Missionary 

Herald $767,833.71 

Legacies, as acknowledged in the Missionary Herald, 124,145.17 

Interest on General Permanent Fund 21,180.76 

$913,159.64 

Balance due August 31, 1906, from W. B. M. I. . . 28,469.51 

Balance due August 31, 1906, from Canada Cong. 

Foreign Missionary Society 3,162.25 

Balance at debit of the A. B. C. F. M. August 31, 1906, 85,417.39 



$1,030,208.79 
SUMMARY OF EXPENDITURES. 
Cost of Missions. 

Mission to West Central Africa $21,795.81 

Mission to East Central Africa 10,431.08 

Zulu Mission 33,610.08 

Mission to European Turkey 38,870.93 

Mission to Western Turkey 103,103.72 

Mission to Central Turkey 44,655.29 

Mission to Eastern Turkey 43,574.17 

Marathi Mission 90,740.99 

Madura Mission 62,637.62 

Ceylon Mission 11,704.14 

Foochow Mission 51,611.43 

South China Mission 7,621.84 

North China Mission 67,743.12 

Shansi Mission 9,353.15 

Mission to Japan 89,648.87 

Hawaiian Islands : • • 350.00 

Micronesian Mission 24,872.32 

Mission to Mexico 25,149.11 

Mission to^Spain 19,056.91 

Mission to Austria 10,196.71 

Philippine Islands Mission 1,803.69 

$768,530.98 

Cost of Agencies. 
Salaries of District and Field Secretaries, their travel- 
ing expenses, and those of missionaries visiting the 

churches, and other like expenses $31,835.04 

Young People's Department 5,940.54 

37,775.58 

Cost of Publications. 
Missionary Herald (including salaries of 
Editor and Publishing Agent, and 
copies sent gratuitously, according to 
the rule of the Board, to pastors, honor- 
ary members, donors, etc.) $9,808.93 



EXTRACTS FROM REPORT OF TREASURER. 13 

Less amount received from 

subscribers $2,808.77 

and for advertisements . . 1,725.20 
From income of Missionary 

Herald Fund 103.60 

4,637.57 

$5,171.36 

Expenses of preparation of 

History of American Board $2,054.25 
All other publications . . . 3,795.01 

$5,849.26 

Less amount received from sales .... 114.32 

5,734.94 

10,906.30 

Cost of Administration. 

Department of Correspondence $14,034.57 

Treasurer's Department 9,956.93 

New York City 2,544.94 

Miscellaneous items (including rent of " Missionary 
Rooms," furniture and repairs, electric light, post- 
age, stationery, copying and printing, library, 
insurance of do., honorary members' certificates) . 9,931 .58 

36,468.02 

Debt September 1, 1905 176,527.91 

Total $1,030,208.79 



14 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 



EXTRACTS FROM THE REPORT OF THE HOME 
SECRETARY, REV. CORNELIUS H. PATTON, D.D. 

Death of Secretary Smith. 

For the first time in twenty-two years the Board meets without 
the presence of Secretary Judson Smith, D.D. Elected at the 
Columbus meeting of the Board, in 1884, to fill the place created 
by the death of Secretary Means, he was associated with Secretary 
Clark in the care of the Foreign Department until the latter's 
retirement in 1894. From that time until his own death, June 29, 
1906, he was senior Secretary. During this long term of service 
he became so thoroughly identified with the work, and his presence 
became so much a part of our annual gatherings, that to many 
this meeting will seem lonely and strange without the sight of his 
benignant face and the sound of his rarely sympathetic voice. 
The Prudential Committee passed suitable resolutions at the time 
of Secretary Smith's death, expressing for the Board appreciation 
of his high qualities of head and heart, his noble services for the 
cause of foreign missions, and sorrow over the loss we have sus- 
tained in both official and personal ways. The resolutions and 
personal tributes which have come to us from the leading mission- 
ary societies of this country and Great Britain, and from men 
prominently connected with this work at home and abroad, indi- 
cate that Dr. Smith was one of the most conspicuous figures in 
the missionary world. This widespread recognition of his worth 
has brought great honor to our Board, and it should be a cause of 
sincere gratitude on our part that so many organizations share 
with us in the appreciation of this noble life. 

Appointment of Missionaries. 

On account of the large debt of the previous year, the Prudential 
Committee determined to make no missionary appointments to 
take effect during the fiscal year aside from unmarried women 
supported by the Woman's Boards. This policy was strictly 
adhered to, notwithstanding the fact that our missionaries as a 
class are sadly overworked on account of the severe retrenchment 
of recent years. These men and women we are sending to the 
front are breaking down to an alarming degree, and the churches 
should know what it means to them, to their friends, and to the 



EXTRACTS FROM REPORT OF HOME SECRETARY. 15 

work, for the Prudential Committee to adopt the poHcy of the 
past 3^ear. Only a dire necessity could lead to such a step. It 
should be borne in mind, also, that the need increases rapidly with 
the delay, and that we cannot longer withhold reenforcements in 
certain fields without imperiling the work of decades. 

Need of Candidates. 

We wish to lose no opportunity to impress upon the Board that 
we are greatly in need of recruits. The impression has gone 
abroad that the supply of missionary candidates is greater than 
the demand. Exactly the reverse is true. The false impression 
probably arises from the large number of student volunteers 
reported by the Student Volunteer Movement. The total number 
for all institutions, ages, and denominations does appear large. 
But separate out those w^ho are Congregationalists, and then those 
who avh ready to go in a given year and who prove to be qualified 
on spiritual, intellectual, and physical grounds, and we find this 
source of supply quite inadequate. 

The Million-Dollar Campaign. 

The demand for a special campaign for a million dollars arose at 
the last meeting of the Board. In fact, it antedated the meeting, 
being born of much prayer and thought on the part of the passen- 
gers upon the American Board special train to Seattle. Sub- 
scriptions on the train and at the meeting for extra gifts amounted 
to twenty-five thousand dollars. At a conference of the secre- 
taries and workers connected with the Home Department in 
October, extensive plans were laid for an educational and financial 
canvass of the denomination. With slight modifications from 
time to time, the plans were carried through in the period from 
January 22 to April 12. Fifty cities were selected for all-day 
meetings. Emphasis was placed upon reaching the men of our 
churches, and the meetings ordinarily closed with a supper for men 
exclusivel)^ Feeling the need of some missionary speaker of more 
than usual distinction. Dr. Arthur H. Smith, of China, was sent 
for. All the available missionaries on furlough were utilized. 
The president and all the officers of the Board, together with 
prominent pastors and laymen, gladl}^ contributed their services. 

As the campaign proceeded, additional cities were included, and 
three companies of speakers worked simultaneously. Considera- 
ble use was made of advertising matter in the denominational 



16 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

papers, and this was continued through the year and found to 
be of great value. Emphasis was placed on the spiritual appeal 
rather than upon the financial. A Prayer Union was organized 
among our friends at home and abroad, and the morning session in 
each city was devoted largely to prayer. A policy of absolute 
frankness in regard to the affairs of the Board was adopted, and 
our constituency were made aware of all our problems and needs. 
Too much cannot be said in recognition of the services of our 
missionaries in this series of meetings, and as for Dr. Arthur H. 
Smith, his coming proved clearly providential in many ways. The 
testimonies of these men, always of value when given separately, 
were greatly increased in power through the massing of our forces 
in the larger Congregational centers. 

During the closing months of the year our appeal was directed 
more to individuals than to churches. By means of personal 
letters and interviews thousands of our friends were moved to 
make special gifts. The response from individuals during the 
closing days was unprecedented. Remittances came to us at the 
rate of two hundred and fifty per day. It required eighteen and 
one-half pages of the Missionary Herald to acknowledge the 
receipts for the closing month of the year, — an unprecedented 
showing. 

The Support of Higher Educational Institutions. 

As the work of the Board increases in extent and comprehen- 
siveness, in response to the favorable conditions abroad, it becomes 
evident that we must secure a larger sum of money than can 
reasonably be expected from the churches contributing through 
their ordinary channels. We are confident the next few years will 
bring upon the field what President King calls '' capitalistic 
statesmen " — persons of large means who will take broad views of 
education as an international force and a means of building up 
Christian institutions and Christian civilization in foreign lands. 
As America has been enjoying an era of large gifts for her colleges 
and libraries, we believe men and women of wealth can be found 
who will do a similar work for the schools of higher learning abroad. 
The opportunity to reproduce for China, Turkey, and India the 
work of such institutions as Robert College at Constantinople and 
the Syrian Protestant College at Beirut must appeal strongly to 
the broad-minded and Christian capitalists we see coming to the 
front in these days of marvelous prosperity. 



extracts from report of home secretary. 17 

In Conclusion. 

And thus the record of the year ends so far as the Home Depart- 
ment is concerned — a year containing some disappointments and 
failures, but so many evidences of divine favor that the note of 
thankfulness should dominate all our song. " Jehovah hath done 
great things for us; whereof we are glad." As we meet on the 
historic and sacred ground of Williamstown, where one hundred 
years ago was the spiritual and hence the real beginning of this 
Board, may we not feel that the God of our fathers is with us yet, 
that he claims this organization as his own, and that he will inspire 
us and use us to-day as surely as he did Samuel J. Mills and his 
companions when they prayed this work into existence one hun- 
dred years ago. Others will tell of the grand achievements of our 
missionaries in many lands. But let us who are called to uphold 
their hands and support the work from afar, rejoice that we are 
permitted to become partners in such an enterprise. Let us here 
dedicate ourselves anew^ to the home task, in the assurance that 
the kingdom is one all over the earth, and that whether far or near 
we all may be fellow-workers with Christ in the sublime enterprise 
of winning the world to God. 



18 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL 



EXTRACTS FROM THE REPORT OF THE FOREIGN 
SECRETARY, REV. J. L. BARTON, D.D. 

Political Outlook and Changes. 

Whiise our missions in no measure represent a political move- 
ment, it is equally certain that political conditions and changes 
necessarily affect the progress of missionary work. The possession 
by the United States of the Philippine Islands opened the door 
for direct missionary operations in the new possession, and eight 
million people became at once accessible to the gospel. It requires 
no argument to demonstrate that political changes produce and 
demand in every land corresponding changes in missionary opera- 
tions. 

During the year under review there have occurred movements 
among the nations that are significant, and which must be duly 
considered in order to a clear grasp of the year's missionary opera- 
tions. 

The first we will mention centers in the near East and affects 
our Turkish missions as well as the work in Bohemia. I refer to 
the unusual hostility in Turkey to educational and literary effort, 
to the movement in Persia toward a constitutional government, 
and to the proclamation issued by the czar of Russia on Easter 
Day, 1905, granting religious liberty to all the subjects of his 
empire. 

It is well known that for some cause, or for a combination of 
reasons, the demands made by our government some three years 
ago, that American educational and eleemosynary institutions in 
Turkey should be granted the same rights, immunities, and privi- 
leges already granted to similar institutions of France, Russia, 
Germany, and England, have been persistently declined by the 
sultan. Apparently the Turkish government has found much to 
encourage it in the failure of our government to enforce its 
demands. Aggressive measures have been taken by Turkey 
during the year to prevent the erection of new school and hospital 
buildings. The raising, by vote of Congress, of our legation at 
Constantinople to the rank of an embassy has not as yet changed 
these conditions. 

The movement in Persia as well as in Russia towards a consti- 
tutional and representative form of government cannot fail to have 



EXTRACTS FROM REPORT OF FOREIGN SECRETARY. 19 

an influence upon the more progressive and loyal subjects of the 
sultan. In the most conservative centers of the nearest East there 
is a spirit of progress at work which it will be difficult, if not 
impossible, to suppress. 

Four of the missions of this Board are more or less closely related 
to Russia. Our Western and Eastern Turkey Missions extend 
along the entire southern border of Russia from Persia to Constan- 
tinople. Our European Turkey Mission, with a strong work in 
Bulgaria, comes into close relation with Russia, since the influence 
of the Slav is supreme in the new kingdom of Bulgaria. Our 
mission in Austria already has a work started in Poland. The 
Eastern Turkey Mission has had for a generation considerable 
mission work in the Causasus, which, for more than twenty-five 
years, has been entirely under Russian domination. 

Genuine religious liberty in Russia for all of her one hundred and 
forty million subjects would open to the American Board one of 
the largest doors of opportunity ever opened at one time to any 
organization. Apart from the American Baptist Missionary 
Union, no other missionary organization is so strategically situ- 
ated for an immediate advance, and the front presented by our 
own Board is far more extended than that of our Baptist co- 
workers. The Western Turkey Mission this year in its annual 
meeting passed an urgent resolution expressing its recognition 
of the great and effectual door of opportunity opening at the 
north. 

The most serious political conditions faced today by any of 
our missions are to be found in South Africa, where the " Ethio- 
pian Movement," in connection with some new laws increasing 
taxation, has stirred up the native Zulus, alarmed the English 
officials, and led to not a little bloodshed. The Zulu race in its 
development is exhibiting many elements of strength. The laws 
of the country, for whatever reason, do not recognize the educated 
and industrious Zulu as possessing rights equal to those freely 
accorded the white race. Stirred up by adventurers, and aggra- 
vated, it may be, by measures resorted to by the government to 
repress the desire for a greater degree of independence, companies 
of rebels have been formed, who have seriously clashed with 
government troops, resulting in much loss of life and in the looting 
of two stations of our Board. This has made some local officials 
suspicious of any educational work for these people, and more 
especially are they unfavorable to a form of church organization 



20 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

that puts to the front the trained native pastor, and that aims at 
the organization of native churches that shall be self-supporting 
and self-directing. It is expected that out of this conflict will 
come a better understanding and a wider opportunity. The effect 
of this movement extends into the East Central Africa Mission, 
where we are reaching a similar race and where the leading native 
helpers were trained in South Africa. 

The situation in Japan remains about the same that it was one 
year ago, except that to a fuller degree Christianity is recognized 
as one of the religions of the empire, possessing equal rights and 
privileges with the native religions. Japan is most carefully study- 
ing the religious history of the leading nations of the West, and 
learning well the lesson that religious intolerance characterizes 
the weaker nations, while full religious liberty is always conceded 
by the strong nations. Japanese supremacy in Korea, Manchuria, 
and China has emphasized again the importance of making Japan 
Christian, not only for her own sake, but also because of her 
influence upon the continent. All reports show how this influence 
is increasing, not only in political circles, but in educational, 
commercial, and social directions as well. If Japan were a 
Christian nation today, the problem of Christianizing the four 
hundred millions who occupy the compact territory upon the 
continent just across the narrow sea would be greatly simplified. 

In China the situation, while practically unchanged so far as 
the relations of the empire to outside nations are concerned, has 
materially changed during the year. The great number of 
students who have gone to Japan, as well as to our own country, 
call to mind the early days of Japan's advance from ancient con- 
servatism towards modern civilization. To this student move- 
ment towards the West is to be added the significant world tour 
of the Imperial High Commissioners, sent by the way of the 
United States to look into conditions of commerce, manufacture, 
education, and religion. Much will depend upon the report carried 
back by this commission. Considering the character and ability 
of the men sent, there can be no question that the outcome of the 
expedition will be most valuable to China. 

In the meantime, the old examinations for official appointment 
and promotion, which have been conducted almost from time 
immemorial in the Confucian classics, have, by imperial decree, 
been done away with, and examinations in modern science have 
been substituted. This one step alone constitutes a revolution 



EXTRACTS FROM REPORT OF FOREIGN SECRETARY. 21 

of the widest sweep and significance. It creates at once a uni- 
versal demand for schools in which the English language and 
modern sciences are taught. It means the breaking away of the 
Chinese from a custom that originated in conservatism and fostered 
exclusion, adopting in its place a custom that necessarily must 
array that country with the progressive nations of the world. 
Politically the attitude of China as represented by her officials is 
rapidly changing, and there is even a danger that China may move 
too rapidly and too far in her official recognition of Christianity. 

On the last of July of this year an imperial decree was issued 
promising sweeping changes in the laws of the empire, amounting 
virtually to a promise of a constitutional form of government. 
We cannot expect so rapid a change to be brought about at once, 
but there can be no question that China is today facing in that 
direction. Her attitude towards Western civilization exhibits a 
decided change. 

Cooperation. 

Two significant movements toward substantial and effective 
cooperation with the Germans in mission work have been put into 
operation during the year. These are in Turkey and in Micronesia. 
Soon after the Armenian massacres German friends became more 
interested in the efforts of our missionaries to care for the many 
orphans left destitute. Money was raised in Germany and sent 
to our missionaries in Harpoot, Van, Marash, and other places for 
that purpose. When the task of caring for these orphans became 
too heavy for our missionaries to bear alone, German assistants 
were sent out, in some cases, to cooperate. Cordial relations upon 
the field were established between our missionaries and the Ger- 
man workers. Out of this has grown an agreement, entered into 
this year, by which it is expected the Deutsches Hiilfsbund will 
send into different parts of Turkey carefully selected German 
missionaries to cooperate with our forces in aggressive evangelistic, 
educational, and medical work. 

The other movement in this direction is that of the National 
Young People's Society of Christian Endeavor Union of Germany, 
which has already sent, at its own charges, three trained and 
consecrated German men to cooperate as assistants with our 
missionaries in the Caroline and Marshall islands. Another man 
is expected to be upon the way in a few months. This method of 
cooperation promises to meet fully the demands of the German 



22 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

government in the islands regarding the use of the German 
language, while it is arousing a new interest among the Protes- 
tants of Germany in the Christian movement there. It is expected 
that the German organization will provide funds for the support 
both of the missionaries they send out and the direct native work 
under their care. 

In the North China Mission cooperation with the London 
Missionary Society and the Presbyterians in higher educational 
work, entered into since the Boxer uprising, is most satisfactory. 
Plans for a combination with the United Brethren and the London 
Missionary Society at Canton are under consideration, while in 
Foochow an interdenominational arrangement in theological 
training is contemplated. In the Marathi Mission, India, the 
Roha field oi the Bombay station has been passed to the care of 
the United Free Church Mission, and a part of the Rahuri station 
is passing to the care of other boards better situated to care for 
the people for whom we are unable to provide. In Southern India 
the London Missionary Society Mission and the Arcot Mission of 
the Reformed Church of America have organized a form of church 
federation with our Madura Mission, and in Japan the United 
Brethren, Methodist Protestants, and our own mission are drawing 
together in closer fellowship and cooperation. 

All of these movements are in the interests of enhanced efficiency 
and power and greater economy of men and money. 

Turkey. 

Under this head we include four of the strong missions of this 
Board, including all the work carried on by us in Asia Minor, 
Armenia, Northern Syria, Mesopotamia, Macedonia, and Bulgaria. 
This constitutes a group of missions well established, supported 
in Turkey itself by 139 evangelical churches, which have a native 
membership of 16,099. Not a few of these churches are strong in 
numbers and support their own work without asking aid from 
the Board. 

These four missions, owing to the needs and conditions of the 
country, have felt the necessity of emphasizing educational work. 
There are theological seminaries at Marsovan, Harpoot, and 
Marash. Until there are changes in the laws of Turkey, these 
three cannot be combined. These theological schools are wholly 
unable to prepare men in numbers sufficient to meet the needs of 
the churches and of the evangelistic work. No part of the work in 



EXTRACTS FROM REPORT OF FOREIGN SECRETARY. 23 

Turkey is so fruitful in permanent and self-perpetuating results, 
none deserves more to be pushed with new and increasing 
vigor. 

The collegiate institutions — Anatolia College at Marsovan, 
Euphrates College at Harpoot, Central Turkey College at Aintab, 
St. Paul's Institute at Tarsus, International College at Smyrna, 
American College for Girls at Constantinople, Central Turkey 
College for Girls at ]\Iarash, and the Collegiate and Theological 
Institute at Samokov, Bulgaria — all are crowded and over- 
crowded with students, and need funds for scholarships, enlarge- 
ment, and running expenses. Turkey needs Christian leaders, 
and these institutions are training them. They ought to have 
the most liberal support. All of the educational work is most 
prosperous, in that students and pupils abound and the people pay 
liberally for these privileges. The fine girls' school building at 
Aintab was burned in the spring and is now practicall}^ rebuilt. 

One of the leading Protestant churches in Constantinople now 
has as its efficient pastor a son of one of the most able Armenian 
pastors of the past generation. This pastor, Rev. Arshag Shmav- 
onian, is a graduate of Robert College and of Hartford Seminary, 
resigning a pastorate in this country to accept the call to succeed 
his father in that important metropolitan church. When the laws 
and practices of Turkey will permit them so to do, there are many 
able and consecrated Armenians now in America who will eagerly 
return to work for their people. Many of these are well able to 
command important positions as pastors, evangelists, teachers, 
physicians, etc. Many of the Armenians in this country are 
contributing most liberally for the support of medical, educational, 
and evangelistic work among their people in Turkey. 

India and Ceylon. 

Our three missions in these countries include two of the oldest 
missions of the Board. We have a distinct field assigned to us 
by common consent, in which dwell some seven millions of people. 
These look to our missionaries and to this Board for their Christian 
teaching and general enlightenment. 

We have established among these two distinct races, the 
Marathis and the Tamils, all phases of Christian work. In no 
country have we a clearer or more complete exhibit of evangelistic, 
educational, medical, literary, and industrial work than appears in 



24 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

these three missions. Our eighty-three missionaries reside at 
twenty-one different centers, including the largest and most 
important towns in their districts. Outside of these station 
centers there are nearly one thousand different places occupied 
by some mission institution, like a church or preaching place or 
school, or, in a few cases, by only a group of Christians, exerting 
their influence for Christ. This vast and varied work, covering 
great areas of country, was looked after in detail last year by a 
trained Christian native force numbering one thousand four hun- 
dred and eighty-one men and women. Many of these are men of 
liberal education and widely recognized ability. All have been 
trained for this work in mission institutions, and to the work they 
give their entire time and strength. For every male American 
missionary connected with these three missions there are, upon an 
average, forty-three trained native Christian workers. This fact 
clearly shows the policy of these missions as regards the training 
and employment of a native agency. 

The economic and industrial conditions in India have compelled 
our missions to introduce into their educational system many 
forms of industrial training. It is found that, for the youth of 
that country, some form of industrial training is calculated to do 
more toward the awakening of the intellect and the development 
of character than the ordinary educational course alone. Our 
missions as well as the government are practically agreed that 
some form of industrial training has a large place in the best 
educational systems for India. We have this line of work well 
developed at Bombay, Ahmednagar, Sirur, Sholapur, and in 
Ceylon, while plans for the same work in connection with the 
college at Madura are maturing. The famines have compelled 
our missions to provide for large numbers of orphans, and this has 
necessitated industrial operations as a means of support, while 
incidentally they have taught independence and self-reliance. It 
has been demonstrated that the student who engages in some 
industrial training exercises each day makes more substantial and 
rapid progress in his regular studies than do those who do not work 
with their hands. 

China. 

It is difficult to speak calmly of China as a mission field. One 
scarcely knows where to begin, and whatever is said upon the 
subject is liable to become ancient information before the state- 



EXTRACTS FROM REPORT OF FOREIGN SECRETARY. 25 

ment can be delivered from the press. China has begun to move, 
and we have every reason to expect continuous and accelerated 
raotion. An intellectual revolution is taking place, and from this 
as a starting point, what may we not expect, since China's weak- 
ness in the past has been her self-satisfaction and intellectual 
paralysis? 

With this mental awakening has come a new conception of 
religion, and a tolerant, not to say intellectual, recognition of 
Christianity that promises boundless possibilities in the near 
future. Educated Chinese are reading Herbert Spencer, and 
modern science is exalted above the classics of Confucius. Over 
eleven thousand Chinese students are studying in Japan, and the 
stream of picked young students from that country is already 
turned across the Pacific to our own shores. 

The leading viceroy of the empire has already established more 
than five thousand schools of primary and secondary grade in the 
Chihli province, in order to prepare the young men of that province 
for the new government courses. In most of these schools West- 
ern learning and the English language have a place. The rapid 
increase in the number of newspapers is significant. In Tientsin 
four years ago only three newspapers were published, while to-day 
there are twenty-three. Whoever can prove himself able to 
render China, at this time, real assistance in her great forward 
movement will find a welcome there. 

What is more interesting to us is the fact that this awakening 
is not anti-Christian. The making of the Christian Sabbath an 
official rest day has its significance, although not in itself an expres- 
sion of approval of our religion. An imperial decree has been 
recently issued exhorting parents to refrain from binding the feet 
of their daughters, emphasized by the declaration that men who 
wish to hold office in the empire must not have wives or daughters 
with bound feet. This last decree has not yet been made oper- 
ative, yet many officials are shaping their lives accordingly. 
Another recent decree most emphatic in its character has been 
directed against the use of opium. Is there a so-called Christian 
nation on earth that will dare lift its arm against the carrying out 
of that decree by the government of China? 

A more significant fact in the face of present conditions is that 
Yuan Shih Kai, who for some time has been recognized as the 
most powerful official in China, the viceroy of the capital province, 
has become the champion of modern advance almost unparalleled 



26 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

in the history of China. In addition to his general works of 
reform, he has recently published two significant books. One, 
'^ A Text-Book on Patriotism/' deals with this subject largely 
from a Western standpoint, showing the necessity of radical politi- 
cal, intellectual, and moral changes in China in order to maintain 
herself as a nation. The second book is, if possible, more signifi- 
cant still. This is upon the subject of "■ Christianity in China." 
In the eight chapters of the book the learned and influential vice- 
roy discusses the history of the entrance of Christianity into that 
country with tolerable accuracy, and, what is most significant of 
all, with unconcealed sympathy. Emphasis is laid upon the non- 
political and non-judicial character of the missionaries and their 
work, and the toleration to be granted to converts and their 
exemption from the payment of fees for idolatrous purposes. 
An entire chapter is devoted to the treatment which should be 
accorded Christian missionaries, declaring that they should be 
treated with all the courtesy and decorum of civilized etiquette. 
The author dwells upon the fact that missionaries have come to 
China to persuade men to the practice of virtues, and, therefore, are 
entitled to great respect. In the chapter upon " Christian Prin- 
ciples " the words of Jesus are taken as the common basis for the 
Christian system, and many quotations are made from the Sermon 
on the Mount with unreserved approval. The significance of a 
work like this for breaking down barriers and opening hitherto 
closed doors, from the pen of one of the most, if not the most, 
influential official in the empire, cannot be estimated. It is issued 
in the Chinese language, and apparently was not intended for 
foreign readers. 

We will mention only two more significant movements of this 
nature, although many more might be given. Chang-Chih-tung, 
viceroy of the provinces of Hupeh and Hunan, has recently issued 
a decree that the New Testament be introduced into all the schools 
of those two provinces, which have a population of fifty-eight 
millions, two thirds that of the United States. The superintendent 
of education for the province of Fukien, one of the strongest centers 
for education in the empire, who takes the place of the literary 
chancellor in the old system of education, has expressed his desire 
that the mission colleges at Foochow should be brought into such 
relations with the government that it might have some share in 
the educating and civilizing work these institutions are doing for 
the youth of that great province. The local Chinese papers have 



EXTRACTS FROM REPORT OF FOREIGN SECRETARY. 27 

reported that the government is ready to grant graduates of these 
colleges full recognition. 

These isolated facts are sufficient to demonstrate that great 
changes are taking place in China and that the movement is 
favorable to the propagation of Christianity there. We can go 
even further than this and say that the movement demands the 
Christian missionary, the Christian school, and Christian literature, 
and that every possible Christian influence in increased propor- 
tions be provided at once for that great empire. 

We have four distinct and well-established missions in China. 
These extend from Canton and Hongkong on the south to Peking 
and Kalgan upon the great wall on the north, and inland to the 
province of Shansi, with a strong center at Foochow and in Sha- 
owu, nearly three weeks' journey to the west of that important 
city. The North China and Shansi missions, swept by destruc- 
tion and massacre in 1900, are again reestablished and ready for 
aggressive work. 

We have in these four missions a force of 109 American mission- 
aries, located in 16 stations and including several of the 
largest and most important cities of the empire. Through 573 
native agents, some of them able Chinese pastors, we are also 
carrying on work in 226 other places, each one of which is a 
center for Christian light and influence. There has never been a 
time when the China missions were calling so loudly for reenforce- 
ments as they call to-day. Two important stations in the North 
China Mission are left almost alone, when the number of inquirers 
was never so many as now. It is the calm judgment of the North 
China, the Shansi, and the Foochow missions that the number of 
missionaries now upon the field should be increased at once by 
from twenty-five to fifty per cent in order to do justice to the 
special providences of the hour and to prevent the present mis- 
sionary force from breaking down with overwork. The demand 
is equally strong for increased funds to permit the missions to 
train the Chinese Christian young men and women for important 
positions in the new advance movement. The immediate call in 
China is to train the Chinese youth for positions of trust and leader- 
ship in the great Christian commonwealth now emerging. 

Japan. 

The events of the year have emphasized anew the importance of 
our mission to Japan. They have also demonstrated, in a most 



28 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

remarkable manner, the wisdom of the poHcy of our Board in 
inaugurating from the first self-supporting and self-directing and 
self-propagating churches and educational institutions. If success 
in mission work is measured by the number of churches controlled 
by the home Board and the home churches, then we have not 
much of which to boast in Japan. But if we measure the depth, 
power, and permanency of the work accomplished by the number 
of native churches that have reached such a degree of strength 
that they are able to support their own pastors, care for their own 
affairs, propagate missions, and carry on, without foreign assist- 
ance, all the functions of the Christian Church, then we have a 
right to point to this island mission with enthusiasm. From the 
first the Board has never sought to retain control of any form of 
Christian work in the mission field that the people themselves were 
able to support and direct. We have always deemed it to be the 
principal aim of all of our work, and the goal to which all effort 
was to aim, to establish upon well-laid foundations all forms of 
Christian institutions, and at the same time raise up a native con- 
stituency trained to assume at as early a date as possible the 
direction and support of everything. We have never attempted 
to plant American churches in Japan or to maintain control of 
Japanese churches. The Kumi-ai churches in that empire which 
have been organized by our mission, and by Japanese Christians 
in cooperation with our mission, are true churches of Jesus Christ, 
but they are also Japanese churches, both in membership and in 
control. 

The Doshisha has had one of the most prosperous years in its 
history. Firmly established upon its Christian foundation, recog- 
nized by the government as a Christian school, and having upon 
its rolls more than seven hundred students, many of whom are 
Christians, but a larger number of whom have as yet made no 
profession of Christianity, this school of Neesima is in a position 
to do its full share in the Christianization of the empire. 

Kobe College for Girls has made a marked advance, not only in 
the enlargement of its plant, but in adopting a new constitution 
and is forming a board of managers in Japan, upon which board 
the Japanese are to be represented. This college is overcrowded 
with students. 

Our mission, numbering sixty-eight members, of whom twenty- 
three are ordained, is in close cooperation with the Japanese in 
evangelistic operations and in every form of Christian work. For 



EXTRACTS FROM REPORT OF FOREIGN SECRETARY. 29 

nearly twenty years the relations between our missionaries and 
the Japanese leaders have not been so cordial as they are at the 
present time. 

Cooperation is in the air of Japan today, and the Christian 
movement is solidifying and simplifying itself for a strong, steady, 
and determined advance. The student classes alone in our own 
and in government institutions form a body sufficiently large and 
full of promise to command the entire time and attention of our 
mission. The field is large, ready, and inviting for every Christian 
effort. 

Africa. 

The three missions in Africa have now become two by reason 
of the East Africa Mission and the Zulu Mission, through their 
community of interest, uniting under the name of the American 
Mission to South Africa. This mission is now composed of the 
Rhodesian branch and the Zulu branch. The Zulu branch, 
although one thousand miles from the Rhodesian branch to the 
north, is training the Zulu helpers for that field. More and more 
the Zulu language is reaching up along the east coast of the conti- 
nent. The newly developed Beira station on the coast is the 
connecting link between the two main branches. The entire 
operations of this mission are under the British flag, except Beira, 
which is subject to the Portuguese government. We again come 
into relations with this same government in the West Africa Mis- 
sion, inland from Benguella upon the western coast. 

We are compelled to report that the British government of 
South Africa has caused the mission more real anxiety and trouble 
than the Portuguese government at Beira. As reported one year 
ago, the South African government stands in fear of the aggressive 
and naturally vigorous Zulu people. The Zulus have readily 
responded to the influence of education, and have already reached 
the point where they are taking note of the discriminations made 
against them in the laws and practices of the land. Since they 
far outnumber the white populations, and also since there is some- 
thing of an Ethiopian movement led by certain Zulu adventurers, 
the government has become suspicious of any kind of mission work 
that educates the race and teaches them self-government in the 
conduct of the affairs of their churches. Not long since, James 
Bryce, in speaking of the conditions prevailing in South Africa, 
said: " The government in that colony, by its repressive and coer- 



30 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

cive measures, is heaping up wrath against the day of wrath. Such 
methods of administration can lead only to bloodshed.'^ During 
the past year, under a reckless leader, there has broken out within 
the bounds of our mission an incipient rebellion, resulting in open 
clashes between the troops and the rebels. The unarmed and 
unorganized Zulus have suffered severely, and two stations of our 
Board, Esidumbini and Noodsberg, have suffered great loss. 
Many of our own native Christians were compelled to go over to 
the insurrectionists to save their property and their lives, and 
then, because of the company they were in, met the severe punish- 
ment of the royal troops. A heavy blow has been struck at 
insurrection. 

In both branches of this mission the work has developed more 
rapidly than we have been able to send out missionaries to super- 
intend it. This is the complaint made against us by the govern- 
ment. They demand more missionary superintendence, since 
they are willing to trust the native organizations if some mission- 
ary is responsible for them, but they do not have confidence in 
independent native institutions of any class. 

Both branches of the mission are, strongly evangelistic. It may 
be stated, however, that the Zulu branch lays special emphasis 
upon the training of a native agency, while the Rhodesian branch, 
two hundred and fifty miles in the interior, places particular 
emphasis upon industrial work. Both branches are developing 
medical work among the natives. 

Pacific Islands. 

The year has been a broken one in the details of the work. The 
Morning Star has not been in commission and is now for sale. 
The tornado of 1905 wrought havoc upon Ponape, while depleted 
forces, with lack of transportation, have limited touring. In 
spite of these facts there have been substantial gains. Upon 
Nauru alone there are reported two hundred and eighty-four 
accessions to the church this year, which was eighteen per cent of 
the entire population of the island. The work at Guam is yet in 
its initial stage, as it also is in the Philippines. Mr. Black has laid 
good foundations, and at present the call is imperative for rein- 
forcements. Nearly three quarters of a million of souls are looking 
to our single missionary family for gospel light and truth. A 
Medical Missionary Association has been formed in New York to 
cooperate with the Board in opening and sustaining at Mindanao 



EXTRACTS FROM REPORT OF FOREIGN SECRETARY. 31 

a strong medical work, for which there is an imperative call. It 
is hoped that a physician can be sent out this year. We are now 
looking for the man. While these Pacific islands possess no master 
races that will become in the future dominant factors in great 
national questions, they do contain a company of God's needy 
children, hungry for the bread of life and ready to receive it 
when brought by loving hands. 

Papal Lands. 

Our papal lands missions are three, all begun in 1872, but 
widely separated. Prague is the headquarters of the Austrian 
Mission, working especially for the Bohemians, Madrid the center 
for the work in Spain,. and Chihuahua and Guadalajara the chief 
stations for our work in Mexico. In none of these are the missions 
making an attack upon the Catholic churches. The missionaries 
are preachers of righteousness, and by precept and example 
attempt to interpret to the people the life of Jesus Christ. 

It is practically conceded now, even by the leaders among the 
Catholics, that our missions and their work are not hostile 
to anything that is good within the national church. The value 
of the work of these missionaries cannot be estimated in any 
measure simply by the number of those who have become Protes- 
tant or by the aggregate of pupils in the mission schools. The 
influence of Protestant missionary work in these countries has 
already penetrated into remote regions and appears in an awakened 
intelligence, an enlightened conscience, and a higher standard of 
morality. Many of the gospel ideas that were savagely assailed 
a generation ago are now advocated even by ecclesiastics of the 
old church. 

In each of these three missions important building operations 
are now in progress. Mexico is constructing a new building for 
the Colegio Internacional at Guadalajara, which provides Chris- 
tian leaders for the gospel work in that country. There are not 
sufficient funds in hand to complete the plan. In Madrid a com- 
modious new hall, a memorial to Mrs. Alice Gordon Gulick, is 
in process of erection under the supervision of the directors of 
the International Institute for Girls. Funds are not 3^et provided 
in full for the completion of this building. This is the most 
complete and best-equipped school in Spain for the higher Chris- 
tian education of girls. In Prague a new Gospel Hall, costing 
twenty thousand dollars, is under construction, with funds given 



32 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

by a friend of the work in Scotland. In these, as in other mission 
lands, a substantial building in a great center is of inestimable 
value 'in localizing and housing the work, affording a point of 
departure and impressing the people with the sense of permanence. 

Conclusion. 

Owing to the fact that vacancies caused by death and resigna- 
tion have not been filled, there has been a decrease during the 
year in the number of missionaries by 13. There has been an 
increase in the number of ordained native pastors from 278 a 
year ago to 299, while the native unordained preachers have risen 
from 595 to 633. The total native laborers connected with the 
mission stands at 4,064. 

The 589 native churches have a membership of 66,724, adding 
to their number during the year under review 5,134 members on 
confession of their faith. There are over 70,000 studying in the 
Sunday-schools. There have been 13 theological schools in oper- 
ation, reporting 168 students studying for the ministry. The 18 
collegiate institutions have nearly 2,000 students in the college 
departments, with even a larger number in the lower grades. In 
all departments and grades of the educational work of all our 
missions there were last year 64,087 pupils enrolled. The 76 
hospitals and dispensaries have treated during the year over 
300,000 patients. 

One other significant statistical feature that should be men- 
tioned is the $212,353 contributed by the native Christians in 
these various mission fields for the support of the religious and 
educational work among them and for missionary enterprises. 

We must not lose sight of the fact that the people, for the most 
part, who give this large sum are poor, in many instances in 
desperate poverty, and that in all cases the daily wage of the 
givers was upon an average only from one fifth to one tenth of 
the wage of the same class in our own country. Under the most 
conservative estimate, this sum given by the native Christians, 
numbering less than seventy thousand church members, would 
equal considerably more than a million dollars in this country. 

The Christ exalted is drawing the nations to himself, and at the 
same time he is shaping the social, intellectual, moral, and reli- 
gious life of all these peoples to harmonize with his plan for the 
redemption of the world. 



YOUNG PEOPLE AND EDUCATION. 33 



EXTRACTS FROM THE REPORT ON THE DEPARTMENT 
FOR YOUNG PEOPLE AND EDUCATION. 

Mr. Harry W. Hicks. 

The secretary in charge wishes to report a year of remarkable 
development, notwithstanding a reduction of its estimated finan- 
cial requirements amounting to nearly fifty per cent, and | the 
absorption of about one fifth of the year in work of the Million- 
Dollar Campaign. Real advance has been made in every impor- 
tant respect, and the field is rapidly ripening for a large harvest in 
the form of more candidates, a more intelligent missionary leader- 
ship in the churches, more devoted prayer for the Board's work 
and workers, and a substantial increase in gifts. 

Field Work. 

The work of the year has been done in thirty-four states. About 
two months were given to the Million-Dollar Campaign in nineteen 
cities. Four summer conferences, four metropolitan institutes, 
six colleges and seminaries, and several local and state associations 
have been included in the travel of the year. The special feature 
of the year was two trips, of a month each, to the Pacific coast. 

No report of the field work can be made to represent adequately 
the difficulty of undertaking to unite Congregational young 
people in missionary enterprises. There is no national, state, or 
district denominational organization of Endeavor societies or 
Sunday-schools. 

Moreover, comparatively little attention as yet has been given 
by program committees to the problems of missionary work in 
Endeavor societies and Sunda3^-schools, in the meetings of 
churches, in state and local conferences and associations. It is 
gratifying to note that since the summer conferences of 1906, 
when this matter was thoroughly discussed, several state associa- 
tions and conferences have introduced discussions on themes of 
interest to young people. 

In view of these facts it becomes plain that there is great need 
for extensive field work on behalf of missions in the Sunday- 
school and the various grades of Endeavor societies, having as 
its chief purpose, instruction of officers and teachers on methods of 



34 



THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 



organization, mission study, giving, and the promotion of prayer 
for missions among all ages of the young. Most of the time of 
the district secretaries must, and should be, given to enlisting the 
adult members of the churches in support of missions. The 
problem of reaching and training the young is both financial and 
educational, and must be considered in the light of the future as 
well as the present constituency of the Board. It is, therefore, 
felt that plans for enlarging the activities of the Home Department 
should include plans for a more adequate field cultivation of 
Sunday-schools and young people, and particularly the young 
men. 

Sale of Literature — Mission Study. 

Ten different text-books were kept in stock, of which 3,487 
volumes were sold. For the two years previous, beginning with 
1903-4, text-book sales were 1,950 and 2,776, respectively. 
The text-book, '' Daybreak in the Dark Continent," alone sold to 
the number of 2,719. One hundred and twenty-nine sets of books 
called " Reference Libraries," chiefly on Africa, containing 1,181 
volumes, were sold, as well as 101 wall maps of Africa and Japan, 
and 506 outline and small colored maps of Africa. In addition 
to the above, the department has sold large numbers of pamphlets, 
leaflets, and booklets on a wide range of subjects, and has aimed 
to supply every legitimate demand of the churches for materials 
with which to work. 

Because of the reduced appropriations the campaign for mission 
study suffered a serious setback. Notwithstanding the sudden 
termination of effort to stimulate interest in systematic study and 
the organization of classes, there were 190 groups reported to the 
office, with 2,325 enrolled. This must be considered only as a 
partial record of facts, since it is known that many classes were 
not reported. The following table indicates the record for the 
three years since this line of cultivation was started 

Mission Study Classes and Literature. 



Year. 


Number of 
Classes. 


Members 
Enrolled. 


Libraries 
Sold. 


Volumes 
in Libraries. 


^Wall Maps 
Sold. 


Text-books 
Sold. 


1903-4 . . 


Ill 


1,319 








1,950 


1904-5 . . 


172 


2,478 


70 


657 


108 


2,776 


^1905-6 . . 


190 


2,325 


129 


1,181 


101 


3,487 



YOUNG PEOPLE AND EDUCATION. 35 

It is doubtful if pastors and superintendents generally under- 
stand how stimulating to the spiritual life of young people the 
associated study of missions has proven. Nor can its value as a 
basis for praying and giving, both now and in the future, be OA^er- 
estimated. The movement to organize such classes must become 
a regular feature of the fall and winter campaign of every church 
before the future of our foreign missions can be called secure. 
If possible, this phase of the department's work should not only 
be reinstated financially, but its plans extended to include two 
regular announcements to Endeavor societies each year, one to 
pastors, and two to superintendents, advertising plans and litera- 
ture, connecting study with giving and praying and field work, to 
train leaders and organize Congregational young people in the 
large cities to undertake large things, for the Board's missions. 

The Station Plan. 

This plan of giving is appealing more and more to leaders of the 
young, for it provides specific information, a living link with the 
field, and affords a basis for united study and prayer. Rarely has 
any person or organization declined to choose this method when 
it was understood. The old method of assigning a native worker 
was unsatisfactory because news of him could not be secured. By 
the station plan a superior educational basis is afforded for 
instruction in the general work of missions. 

If the large number of non-contributing Endeavor societies and 
Sunday-schools are to be enlisted in giving, the station plan depart- 
ment must be greatly strengthened the ensuing year. The amount 
of correspondence and clerical work entailed is large, but only by 
personal and discriminating attention to each non-contributing 
organization can its leaders be induced to consider making an 
offering. If the appropriations granted this department are 
adequate, personal correspondence with every Sunday-school and 
Endeavor society should be carried on during the year, and such 
literature as is necessar}^ to win their financial cooperation should 
be issued. Maps and descriptive circulars for every station 
opened should be provided, and the necessary clerical staff assigned 
to the office administration. The experience of the brief period 
since this plan was adopted in 1903 leads to the conclusion that it 
is capable of adaptation to all classes of donors and organizations 
desiring definite knowledge of the work supported. The faithful 
cooperation of the missionaries who are acting as station corre- 



36 



THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 



spondents is gratefully acknowledged, for without them every 
effort to satisfy inquiring and thoughtful leaders at home would 
fail. 

Christian Endeavor Societies. 

Interest in mission study is growing apace. The number of 
societies, however, as reported in the Year-Book still declines, the 
loss this last year being 86, the total number being 3,421, as 
contrasted with 3,507 the year before. Notwithstanding this 
loss, the number of societies contributing directly to the Board's 
treasury was 662, and the amount $11,192, as contrasted with 
663, and $9,620 the year before. The table tells the story: 



Year. 


Number of 
Societies. 


Number 
Contributing. 


Number 
Non- 
Contributing. 


Amoimt 
Contributed. 


1900-1 

1901-2 

1902-3 

1903-4 ..... 

1904-5 

1905-6 


3,716 
3,723 
3,639 
3,592 
3,507 
3,421 


812 
694 
664 
611 
663 
662 


2,904 
3,029 
2,975 
2,981 

2,844 
2,759 


$11,869 

10,861 

9,569 

8,672 

9,620 

11,192 



This table does not contain figures for the three Woman's 
Boards, which, during 1905-6, reported gifts of $8,895 from 848 
Endeavor societies. 

Sunday-Schools . 

Less lias been done by the Board in times past to stimulate 
giving among the Sunday-schools than the magnitude and the 
readiness of the field have called for. With the exception of 
special appeals for the Morning Star and an annual letter to 
superintendents about the annual Foreign Mission Day in October, 
little has been done. No literature has hitherto been prepared 
by the Board adapted either to leaders or scholars except that 
required for the single occasion in October. Here again discrimi- 
nating correspondence will be necessary to win the cooperation 
of 4,882 schools not reporting gifts to the American Board during 
1905-6. 

The remarkable development of the year in thought and plans 
for missionary instruction in Sunday-schools makes the ensuing 



YOUNG PEOPLE AND EDUCATION. 37 

year a favorable time to outline an adequate scheme of cultiva- 
tion for our own schools. This should include wide advertisement 
of the literature published by the Young People's Missionary 
Movement and the preparation of pamphlet literature for officers ■ 
and teachers, showing the best methods of organizing for missions 
and providing missionary instruction. 

It should also include systematic financial correspondence, both 
with contributing and non-contributing schools. Special Sunday- 
school institutes for Congregational leaders should be held in the 
leading Congregational cities, and much attention should be given 
to the subject in conference and association programs, as well as 
state meetings. 

Young Men. 

As a class the young men of the churches are the '^ neglected 
continent." Only a small proportion are more than attendants 
on the morning church service. Comparatively few are in the 
church harness. Not more than one fourth of those enrolled in 
mission study are young men. They are not within the sphere 
of religious activity of the Christian Endeavor society or the 
Sunday-school. They are, however, easily and permanently 
interested in missions when once a point of contact is established. 
These facts should be carefully weighed, among others, when the 
policy of the Home Department is outlined, with the purpose of 
organizing special meetings for young men in many centers this 
year and entering the field of men's clubs and classes within the 
churches. 

Student Cooperation. 

A larger proportion of young men and women in college are 
Christians than in any other class or group of equal size. It 
therefore follows that among the Christian young people in college 
are those who are best qualified to become the missionary leaders 
of the million young people in the churches. How to utilize the 
student trainedleader after graduation is an important question. 
Can the present " leakage," whereby strong Christian leaders are 
lost to Christian work in the churches as they graduate, be stopped? 
What would be the effect of continuous cultivation of the colleges 
and seminaries upon the supply of money, volunteers for service, 
and teachers of missions? 

An answer to these and other questions cannot fail to impress 
friends of the Board with the importance of sending a representa- 



38 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

tive of its work to every college and university in which there are 
considerable numbers of Congregational students at least once in 
two years, and to every theological seminary once each year. 
'The state universities and leading medical schools and post- 
graduate schools should be included. For many reasons such an 
effort is necessary. But its bearing upon young people's work is 
apparent, for the young can lead the young better than can the 
older members, if they are trained in missionary work. What the 
Student Volunteer Movement does so effectively cannot take 
the place of denominational cultivation of college students, and the 
work of that organization should be brought to a full fruitage by 
completing it through a carefully devised scheme of college visi- 
tation, during which Congregational students may learn about 
Congregational foreign missions, the standards and needs of the 
Board, the ideals and needs of the churches, and make friends 
with the secretaries and missionaries of the Board, who are 
the representatives of the churches. Attendance upon the 
student summer conferences, both for men and women, now about 
fifteen in number, should be a prominent feature of this policy. 
The direct value to the Board of such contact is not the least 
consideration. 



THE RISING TIDE. 39 



THE RISING TIDE. 

Rev. William S. Dodd, M.D., 
Of the Western Turkey Mission. 

In the Western Turkey Mission there is a rising tide of spirit- 
uality. I am not saying that there is a great wave of revival 
sweeping over the field. There is no such thing. I am not 
saying that the standard of spirituality has attained a very lofty 
degree. It has not. But it is not a falling tide, and it is not 
low tide. It is rising. And I have not to look back twenty years 
or ten years to see the difference; five, yes, three years is enough. 
When I recall the state of our churches and congregations a few 
years ago, almost without exception I would describe it as cold. 
There were some, as Ak Serai, to visit which brought a warm 
feeling to our hearts. There were places where, by contrast, we 
were cheered because they did not have a church quarrel on hand, 
or had settled the quarrel of the preceding year. There were 
places where instances of persecution faithfully endured made a 
brightness that attracted our eyes. There were individuals 
everywhere whose simple, consistent, earnest lives made us feel 
the blessedness of Christian fellowship. But, taking the situation 
all through, piety was at a low grade. 

Even then progress was being made, but it was slow, and while 
foundations were being laid, too often they were torn up and had 
to be relaid. There is no more notable instance of this than the 
town of Urgub. There was a Protestant community there among 
the Greeks; there was a teacher of some ability; it was one of our 
regular outstations. But the teacher proved unfaithful, had to 
be dropped; the congregation melted away; the teacher seized the 
little chapel whose title he himself held (by Turkish law, you 
know, property had to be held in the name of an individual, and 
that an Ottoman subject), and he claimed the property as his 
personal possession. Evangelical work seemed to be absolutely 
wiped out. But later a little company of men in the Greek Church 
began reading their Bibles, increased in numbers and influence 
until the orthodox church excommunicated them, and a new 
Protestant community was established, made up of those who 
had endured the fire of persecution, who loved and lived the 



40 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

Bible, who had a new and different spirit; and two of the old 
former Protestants who crept back into the fold were regarded as 
the least worthy of all that little flock. The influence of this 
community has been a strong element in bringing about the 
changed conditions of these later years of which I am speaking. 

The most potent visible influence has been the Aintab revival 
of three and four years ago. What the final results of that have 
been, there in Aintab, I would leave for those from the Central 
Mission to say. I do not know. But certain it is that we have 
received a blessing from it. Men converted there came to our 
field; letters from there went to many of our towns. Simply to 
hear what the Lord had done there quickened the consciences, 
stirred the desires and hopes, and enabled people to believe that 
we could have something of the same also. The soul-stirring 
news from Wales was also eagerly read and sought for, but this 
was after the appetite had been awakened and the faith strength- 
ened by knowing what had taken place in Turkey. For it had 
often been said that it was not natural for the gospel-hardened 
communities of the old churches to have an old-fashioned revival. 
We must not expect it; their type of Christianity was different; 
indeed, some said that such a revival was not desirable, the people 
were too easily stirred to emotion, anyway, which would be only 
passing; that a slow building up of Christian character was to be 
preferred. 

In truth we have to lament some evils that accompanied the 
good, some manifestations that were transient emotions, some 
arrogant claims of superior spirituality and sinlessness that 
brought gainsaying and contempt, and whose result in a people 
always ready for a factional fight has been division in some 
churches. This has gone to such an extent in Cesarea itself that 
we have been tempted to say that the evil has overbalanced the 
good. But I am convinced that these errors will not live, and 
even in the midst of them it is plain that the standards held by 
the people as to what it means to be a Christian, what it means to 
be spiritually minded, how much the Bible ought to be our daily 
food, to what extent religion is measured by the life and not by 
the talk — these standards have all been raised. A higher stand- 
ard is demanded of preachers who shall be true shepherds, not 
hirelings, who shall feed the flock, not themselves. A higher 
standard is demanded of candidates for church membership, the 
movement for purifying the church rolls of unworthy members 



THE RISING TIDE. 41 

has gained force. And most important of all, because it feeds 
every one of these movements, the desire for Bible study is grow- 
ing. Prayer, not as voluble talk — for which Oriental Christians 
have a great aptitude — but as real communion with Jesus Christ 
and the Father, has taken a prominent place. I have never felt 
anywhere a more real sense of being in the divine presence than 
when joining in prayer with some of the simple, earnest souls 
there. Prayer meetings, not as a place for the declamation of 
platitudes, but as a place of seeking a blessing, whose prolonga- 
tion was not due to the interminable length of a few^ long-winded 
prayers, but to the number of short, insistent petitions, — such 
prayer meetings have given a new meaning to the gatherings of 
God's people. 

The encouraging fact in all this, though it may also be counted 
a humiliating fact for us missionaries, is that in most cases the 
human agents concerned have been our native brethren and 
sisters, and many of them the younger ones. In spite of all that 
may be said as to the harm resulting from immature thought, 
from over-literalism in interpretation, from halfway conceptions 
and out-of-proportion presentations of truth, so that in some 
places the doctrines of perfectionism have taken root, yet the 
central facts of the need of conversion, that salvation is only 
through the blood of Jesus, that membership in any church, 
Armenian, Greek, or Protestant, is no guaranty of acceptance 
with God, that complete surrender is what the Lord demands of 
every one of us, — these things have taken their place in the belief 
and understanding of the native church as never before. The 
name of " Teslimji," '' Surrender," has been given to the leaders 
in this movement, largely with a note of derision in it, but it 
indicates well the central point of their teaching. 

There has been progress in intelligence, in ability to handle 
large questions. We see it in our preachers' meetings, and in the 
meetings of the executive committee of the preachers acting with 
us in the management of the general evangelistic work. There is 
progress in the way of manly independence, less of leaning on us, 
financially and mentally. The young men who were entering the 
work fifteen years ago made the impression on me of being much 
niore childish in many ways than those who come to us now. And 
this can hardly be due to a change in my point of view, because 
with increasing disparity in years between myself and them the 
tendency would be to take an opposite view. 



42 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

But, what I wish to present to you to-day is not the fact of 
progress in these other hnes, however encouraging it may be, but 
that there is a rising tide of spirituaUty which promises the 
brightest . things for the future and makes us thank God for the 
power of his Holy Spirit. 

In conclusion may I tell of a single case that shows this? It 
was in the town of Eregli, where I had gone with my dispensary 
assistant for medical work, not expecting to find much interest 
in higher things. There was one Protestant brother there, but 
he had proved too often a stumbling-block instead of a spiritual 
power. But we had hardly settled down before we found a little 
company of young men who were seeking the light. They gath- 
ered around my companion like bees around a clover blossom. 
They had received their impressions of truth in Cesarea, though 
that was three days' journey away. We had meetings every 
night; it was impossible to satisfy their hunger. One of them 
came to me with his troubles. He thought he had given himself 
to Christ, but he could not feel the joy and satisfaction he expected. 
We prayed together, and his prayer was labored, fiat, had no 
rising power in it. We talked, and at last it came out that there 
were things in his business which his conscience disapproved but 
which, because of his partners, he felt he could not give up. It was 
shown to him that here was the difficulty, he could not find the 
perfect peace without the perfect surrender. He stopped talking 
and was evidently battling with himself. I waited in silence, 
only praying for him. The silence continued for minutes. Then 
he looked up and said, " I will do it." And when we prayed 
again the strings of his tongue w^ere loosened, his praise and peti- 
tions for help soared unhindered from a free spirit right up to the 
ear of a listening God. 

It is seeing and hearing such things as these in these last years, 
that were so rare before, that makes me repeat that in Turkey 
the tide of spiritual desire, spiritual understanding, spiritual 
power, is a rising tide. God grant we may all see it come in its 
fullness. 



PRESENT OPPORTUNITY IN MICRONESIA. 43 



PRESENT OPPORTUNITY IN MICRONESIA. 
Rev. Irving M. Channon. 

Micronesia is the smallest of the missions of the American 
Board, but its value to the kingdom of Christ is not in proportion 
to its size. God has a way of lending a value to things without 
relation to size. Indeed, we are just beginning to discover that 
each of the great mission fields has its own problem and its special 
contribution to the kingdom; or, rather, that God is working out 
in each field his own will and purpose in a special way. It is this 
discovery of the mind and plan of the Master that is making the 
study of missions so interesting. Micronesia, then, presents in a 
word the spectacle of a fallen race, after centuries of heathenism, 
reduced to the lowest conditions imaginable, waiting to test the 
power of the gospel to reclaim them. 

Living on coral reefs but a few feet above the sea and a few 
rods in width, literally sand bars; without mountains, rivers, or 
lakes; with a very limited rainfall; without mines and forests, 
and hence with no natural resources, only the cocoanut palm 
and pandanus tree and under a tropical sky, they present condi- 
tions of work extreme and trying. These islands, lying apart 
from the great lines of travel, and presenting but few inducements 
for trade and commerce to seek them out, the only hope for the 
people is the Word of God. And so they present to the church 
the opportunity, nay, they are a challenge to us, to demonstrate 
the power of the gospel to lift fallen humanity into a new life in 
Christ. Notwithstanding these obstacles mentioned, these islands 
have always been interesting and from the beginning have yielded 
quick returns. The very poverty of the people, mentally and 
spiritually as well as physically, has made them ready to listen 
to the offers and blessings of the gospel. 

But at no time has the work been so promising as just now, and 
this is due to several things. First, we have back of us the 
experience of forty years of mission work which is of the greatest 
value. The very fact that we have a past, although only forty 
3'ears, cannot be overestimated. Forty years that stand out so 
different from all the rest of their heathen past! The very trials 
and difficulties are in themselves valuable. The presence of these 



44 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

early missionaries and recent converts has given to the people a 
concrete gospel, and we must certainly remember that we are 
dealing with a people in a kindergarten stage. Again, we are 
ready to reap the reward of these forty years' labor. The founda- 
tions are laid. Bible and school books are translated. Schools 
have been started and churches founded. There is now in 
Micronesia a church membership of about seven thousand. But 
again, greater than this is the growing intelligence on the part 
of the natives. They are coming to understand the gospel, the 
Christian life, its meaning, its claim, and its beauty. They under- 
stand better its teachings. There is among them the conviction 
of sin, a sense of guilt, and a growing desire for better things. 

In a recent tour of these islands we were very much pleased and 
gratified to find that we could preach regular revival sermons, and 
that the people understood means of grace, regeneration through 
Christ, and felt some need for salvation. In a short visitation of 
a few weeks, more than seven hundred and fifty yielded their 
hearts to Christ as a result of such preaching. 

In the schools we are finding the difference between heathen 
children and children born of Christian parentage, and how much 
more it is possible to teach them. We are just beginning to get 
those whose parents were Christians. A few years ago it was not 
possible to teach them more than the simplest branches, seventh- 
and eighth-grade studies, but now they readily understand and 
take up such studies as physical geography, ancient history, 
physiology, botany, and physics. As these go out and become 
teachers, better and better results are obtained. 

One great help that has come to us in the last few years is the 
taking of these islands under the protection of Great Britain and 
Germany. They are suppressing many of the heathen excesses 
and revelries and maintaining law and order and making it possi- 
ble for us to prosecute religious work freely. Recently, large 
deposits of phosphate have been found on two of our coral islands, 
and they are being worked by an English firm, who employ over a 
thousand picked young men from the surrounding islands. This 
offers us a special opportunity to start a mission school and have 
the advantage of this company of young men. By reaching these 
with the gospel we will reach in turn a large number on the islands 
as they return to their homes. May we not hope that the churches 
will enable the Board to reach out for the saving of this people in 
Micronesia who are so providentially placed under their care? 



ANNUAL SERMON. 45 



ANNUAL SERMON. 

Rev. George A. Gates, D.D., 

President of Pomona College, Claremont, Col. 

" The love of Christ constraineth us." — 2 Corinthians 5: 14. 

This language can mean either Christ's love for us or our love 
for Christ. It is, however, fairly certain that Paul's thought 
demands the larger meaning, — Christ's love for man. The occa- 
sion was this : Paul and Silas seemed to their hearers so much in 
earnest that they were thought to be unbalanced. In that age 
crazy people were supposed to be taken possession of by some evil 
spirit. So they said: ''Paul, something has got you," — that 
is the meaning of the verb used. Instead of contradicting them, 
Paul tactfully replied: '' Yes, you are right. Something has got 
me. I'll tell you what it is. The love of Christ has set its grip on 
me." 

Your preacher can find no fitter Scripture word for this service 
than that happy rejoinder of Paul's, '' The love of Christ has laid 
hold on us." 

We are gathered for a great occasion, memorial, glad, trium- 
phant. Let, however, the first note be a call ''so to think as to 
think soberly." We may not meet in the hilarity of children at 
play, but in the seriousness of mature children of God, — glad, 
indeed, that the achievement of the hundred years is so great, 
humbled that the work today is not greater. As we recall the 
first annual meeting — attendance of five; receipts, one thousand 
dollars — and compare that with this, the humility of honest 
gratitude may mark our spirit. This week will be rich in occa- 
sions of expressing sheer triumph, joy in great victories of noblest 
lives well spent, results able to bear- the searching light of any 
test the universe may put. But this hour of such week is for 
worship, wherein pride or mere glorification — most of all, self- 
gratulation — would be irreverence and shame. The names of 
great dead who gave their lives to this work wholly are in our 
minds and hearts. Is the church today living worthily of such, 
ancestry? Unless this meeting sends us back to our places 
humbled and consecrated, with a reverence of purpose deeper 
than the mere joy of modest results already won, even with a 



46 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

sober consecration unto far greater service and wider victories 
and richer winnings for God in the coming years, then will our 
meeting fail of its best purpose. 

If Christ be God's, the cause of missions is dishonored by argu- 
ment in its defense. To attempt to defend missions is to grant 
need of defense. The cause lies properly, not in the realm of 
discussion, but of vision. The cause is an inspiration, a challenge 
of God to man. If the church is an organization of the highest 
known to man, the work of missions is the finest engagement of 
that institution. This is nothing new. It has been so from the 
first missionaries after Jesus until this day. 

When Samuel J. Mills was in the agony of decision, he cried 
out, " Oh, that I never had been born! '' He reached a choice, and 
after a hundred years we can answer why he was born better than 
was possible in his day. The facts of actual accomplishment, as 
the mind grasps the story of the century's work and seizes the 
picture of what is round this globe of earth, are a beautiful poem. 
The word poem is Greek for " something done "; if a work be 
really " done " it is done well, — and that is always a poem. 
Dull and ungrateful should we be not to feel the beauty of God's 
good gift of some success in this work. 

The days we shall be together will run over in measure of the 
joy of those triumphs of grace, as little glimpses of the great vision 
of the whole will appear in speech and song. As our faith lays 
hold on this pioneer work of Christianity in its world-aspects, as 
we catch a little of the view of what shall yet grow from these 
plantings, there is no language for the glory of the hope of it all. 
Either this is so, or we shall do well to go back to our homes and 
sleep awhile longer, — some generations or centuries longer, — till 
we are ready for God's way of looking upon his Son's work on 
this earth. 

This world may yet realize that ancient word, '' I count nothing 
that is human foreign to me," and so foreign missions shall be no 
more. Like the successful physician, whose ambition is to make 
himself so useful in a case that he becomes useless, so the work 
of foreign missions will not have fulfilled itself till it shall have 
ceased to be. 

But meantime we Americans may reverently recall that all 
we have of Christian civilization we owe to foreign missions. 
Our ancestors, amid the oak groves of the Druids or the fields of 
Brittany, were heathen. It is the highest time we were paying 



ANNUAL SERMON. 47 

this historic debt. This first century of American missions is 
the modest beginning on that payment. As the right teacher is 
always learning more from his pupils than they from him, so 
during this century foreign missions haA^e giA^en us some great 
tuitions and brought within our field of Christian sight some 
glorious visions. 

Contributions to Modern Life. 

A. The first of our chief considerations may well be: Some 
contributions made by foreign missions to life^ thought, and 
outlook. 

1. One of the most beautiful works of foreign missions is the 
subjective effect on the men and women who do the work and liA^e 
their lives on the foreign field. Have we not all known apparently 
mediocre men grow into giants, not only of spiritual character, but 
of intellectual grasp and administrative efficiency? One just 
beginning writes, " I have already multiplied mj^self by four." 
Some men and women who would possibly have remained com- 
monplace at home have reached eminence under the tutelage of 
the cogent emergencies of the foreign field. Heroes and heroines 
are they become. They had to be such or utterly fail out there. 
They see the vision of the coming kingdom; it breaks their hearts 
that we at home cannot see it with them. 

2. Another contribution, perhaps the greatest of all, is the larger 
view that the hundred years have taught us of God and his rela- 
tion to all men, of the whole philosophy of history, of the whole 
sweep of revelation, of the whole work of Christ's gospel to the 
human race. That view is larger today than was anywise possible 
to former generations. 

We are near the spot where the work of this society began. 
What was it then? Four or five lads were setting out for a 
mostly unknown work, opposed b}^ half their normal supporters, 
their philosophy of missions going little beyond conA^erting a 
few heathen here and there. We can never adequately honor 
the memory of those men who, thus meagerly equipped and 
wretchedly sustained, did, with courage not less than divine, lay 
their Uaxs on that homely altar. But if the world's conception 
of foreign missions has not grown in a hundred years, then are 
missions undivine; for what is of God is aVive and grows. . 



48 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

As a matter of fact, there is no realm of Christian work which 
has undergone more growth, both in philosophy and method, in 
principle and in application, than this field of foreign missions. 
This larger thought — not of our church or any or all churches, 
but of the kingdom; not technical creeds, but faith and right- 
eousness; not separation, but permeation — is not so new to 
the ablest missionaries as to some at home. This change of view- 
point is now old enough and common since twenty-five years. 
But it has won its place finally. It is well not to forget something 
of its cost. The leaders of the world's thought in this field ought 
to be, and have been and are, our strongest missionaries. If the 
time ever was, it is long gone, for praising or patronizing these 
men. They are our instructors. 

For example, one of these, none other than the president of 
our theological seminary in India, writes recently: '^ I am a great 
believer in the kingdom as distinct from the church. I teach 
that our efforts today should be to advance not our isms, but the 
kingdom of God; that the kingdom is coming more markedly in 
India today outside than inside the church; that every reform 
in Hinduism, every prayer and noble ambition among non- 
Christians, is a part of the kingdom of God; that the kingdom 
is Christ's, and that he is the sole animator of the principles of 
this kingdom wherever they may be found." This also from 
one of our strongest men, thirty years in Japan: " I am an ardent 
lover of the Japanese, an admirer of their past, a firm believer in 
their future. They have taught, and can teach, the West some 
things. But they need Christianity, not so much to destroy as 
to fulfill the best that is in their old inheritance." That mission- 
ary statesman and philosopher of India, recently among us, has 
put out a book with the larger view on every page. 

Such views as these we understand to be held in our time by 
our strongest missionary leaders in India, China, Turkey, every- 
where. Their judgment is well known from their abundant 
testimony, with which most of us are assumably familiar. '' The 
planting of the kingdom " is the great modern word. That is 
exactly what Jesus and the apostles taught and did. It is a 
larger, fairer, truer vision than the best of those of former times. 
The spirit of it has been in mission work from the beginning; all 
honor to those who wrought nobly with equally high motive and 
consecration, but with the lesser vision. " Their works do follow 
them." 



ANNUAL SERMON. 49 

Such a conception harmonizes missions with all revelation and 
providence. It makes missions more organic in race development. 
It , gives firmer ground for patience and constructive hope and 
courage. This larger view reaches beyond the distinctively reli- 
gious realm. It includes the whole range of civilization and life. 
'' The thoughts of men are widened." To this inspiring gain of 
the larger world-thought, contributions distinct, large, and many 
have been made by the work of missions and the missionaries. 

New World-Visions. 

3. In addition to these tuitions, the work of foreign missions 
has opened to the thoughtful two world-visions that easily change 
into a cherished hope. 

(a) One is a world-church. Our Protestantism is only four 
hundred years old. Suppose in the course of the patient centuries 
Protestantism, with its youthful strength, the zeal of its intel- 
lectual grasp and breadth and freedom, in the united power of 
all its various-named bodies, should, in some divine fire, melt its 
trivial differences into a common consecration unto world salva- 
tion. Who would dare attempt to foretell what might be? 
Again the missionaries are leading the way. In North China four 
Protestant organizations — the London Missionary Society, the 
Methodists, the Presbyterians, and the American Board — have, 
for the most part, organically united in a college and medical school 
and theological seminary. In South China there is a similar union 
of different denominations in higher educational work. In India 
there is a general missionary society which unites all Protestant 
Christian bodies in normal training. In Japan, of course, similar 
movements in church union have gone farthest of anywhere. 
Almost universally, on the foreign field, some degree of church 
union has long been a practical necessity. This is a rapidly 
growing way. Face to face with chasms of need, our home dif- 
ferences become trivialities. They are luxuries the missionaries 
cannot afford. 

Suppose, then, that other great branch of the Christian Church, 
the Roman Catholic, could bring to this reunion its best, — the 
magnificent devotion of its finest members, as those devotions 
have shown themselves for centuries throughout the world, a 
church whose ancient saints are in our calendars, — a church of 
God might thus be, of spiritual insight and freedom, coupled with 



50 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

a deep, deep consecration of body and spirit, a church fit to do 
better the will of God. Such a union might easily absorb all 
minor branches of Christendom. Why not? Nothing is impossi- 
ble with God, and God has time. 

Christianity is even yet young upon the earth. It is doubtful 
if we are ready for that thing we call '^ missions/' as it lies in the 
womb of time, coming to birth by and" by. When the church is 
once gripped by the love of Christ, and so becomes a " church of 
a living God,'' there will be nothing less than '^ a new birth " of 
missions. 

(5) The vision widens. This world never saw such visions as 
children in the streets may see today. The great East, which we 
have called heathen and only pitied, almost as we have pitied the 
savages of Africa or the South Seas, may come with its gifts, — 
the subtle intellect of India at its best, the patient strength of 
China in its abundance, the grace and sheer ability of Japan. 
These gifts, as once before " from the East," may be laid at the 
feet of Jesus. 

The vision widens again — into a world-humanity. If a uni- 
versal church can become, the nations will not tarry far or long 
behind. As individual men have learned to live and work to- 
gether with mutual helpfulness and kindness, settling their 
occasional differences, not by fist or club or gun, but by argu- 
ment and appeal and judgment and reverend court, so the nations 
and peoples may one day learn the dreadful folly and waste and 
wickedness of war, the horridest anachronism the sun beholds. 
They, too, may settle their occasional differences in the manner 
of the children of God. There is no reason why the twentieth 
century should not be the honorable graveyard of human war, — 
if only " the love of Christ " can " constrain " mankind. 

In the light of God's face it is not too good to be true. Our 
Bible is full of just such visions, only we do not dare believe them. 
This hour of this meeting is set apart for visions. Failure of 
vision is loss of the hour. Face to face with the world-work of 
this American Board, remembering its humble beginnings, seeing 
^' how far that little candle has cast its beams," may we not dare 
to believe — and act as if we believed it — that ''the love of 
Christ " shall " take possession " of the world? 

One church, however many families; one humanity, however 
many peoples, sounds like a beginning of the kingdom of God 
upon the earth. Is not the vision a " sure hope " ? 



annual sermon. 51 

Things that Put Us to Shame. 

B. We pass to a second general consideration, a word of hu- 
miliation and rebuke. 

The spirit of this meeting is: Courage, forward! But let it be 
that deep courage, not afraid to face all the facts, not deceived 
by the glare of a temporary success; not afraid to recognize the 
danger of reaction, that may take the insidious shape of wicked 
contentment in any past, far or near. With all that ministers to 
our cheer this day, let us know that the coming days and years 
will demand of us utter seriousness, a devotion of spirit and conse- 
cration to work, such as we have not yet known, if God's will is 
to be done in us and through us in this work. Dare we forget 
these latter years of emptiness of missionary treasuries? It is 
God's blessing of success that the work pushes us and pleads for 
help with strong crying that ought to break harder hearts than 
even ours. The sorry fact is that there are hundreds of our 
churches and thousands of our people that know little and care 
less for the world of foreign missions. The doing of any work that 
is worth while costs in effort and sacrifice. Nevertheless these 
Herculean labors necessary to gather money are not our glory, 
but our shame. 

Are we conscious of our dishonor that the missionary forces are 
bidden year by year to cease to advance; bidden to do less than 
stand still, even to retrench and retreat and give up well-begun 
enterprises, cut off prospering outstations, sacrificing the work 
of years? Were it not inexpressibly sad, it would be no less than 
fearfully ridiculous. For a hundred years prayers for the success 
on mission fields have been made in countless numbers. Now 
must the prayer be: " Lord, please, not so much success. We 
didn't really mean it. We are poor and cannot pay the bills. 
Rebuke the zeal of those dreadfully successful missionaries lest 
we be forced to give until we starve," — that, too, in days of 
material prosperity never before known in this nation; in days 
when in ten years Congregationalists of America have increased 
their wealth by two hundred and forty million dollars, at the same 
time cutting off ten per cent of their church contributions. 

What does it mean, this anomaly, discrepancy, this maladjust- 
ment between prayer and act, between opportunitj^ and achieve- 
ment, between the open door and the failure to enter in, this 
sending out an army and withholding its supplies, this breach of 



52 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

contract with those at the front, this failure to honor victories 
as they deserve honor in the forward movement to greater vic- 
tories? What does it mean? Why not tell the truth? A ser- 
mon should dare to tell it; should not dare not to tell it. 

Well, then, here it is in all its stark honesty: We American 
Christians do not believe in Christian missions. That is, we do 
not believe in Christ. That is, we would patronize God instead 
of worshiping him and serving him as children of the kingdom, 
who believe in the kingdom and in the redemption of this world. 
We believe in automobiles a hundred times more than we believe 
in missions. 

If Jesus should appear in one of our churches, some member 
of that church would patronize him by offering (that is the word) 
to take him for a spin Sunday afternoon in his new fifty-horse- 
power machine, a man who had perhaps put one ringing dollar on 
the plate for foreign missions. The machine is well enough in its 
place. It is only here a typical illustrative answer to the question 
whether we believe in missions. Christianity is missions; we 
make it one of our conveniences. The cross is a dainty ornament 
at vest or throat; if it could once more, as it was, be a word unfit 
to be spoken in polite society, it might again have power, — power 
to save us from our poor pretenses of faith. 

The great Christian world needs rebuke, not wheedling; needs 
to feel shame to look Jesus in the face while his work stands 
calling to ears that will not hear. The pity of it? Not a bit of 
it. The dishonor of it! Let us not creep behind pretense of 
weakness; let us confess our sin. Well has it been said: ^' The 
greatest peril of Christianity is not in criticism,* whether it be 
Biblical or theological, but in the failure of the professed followers 
of Jesus to live the life of love and unselfish devotion which he 
taught and illustrated.'^ 

Our other rebuke from modern missions as compared with 
former times is this : The adding years have heaped up the busi- 
ness obligation. That is, those missionary men and women have 
gone out at the appeal of our churches into this life-work. They 
have permanently forsaken all, making their greatest gift, — their 
lives. To the support of their work our churches are pledged 
by the most solemn obligations organized society knows. Just 
suppose that it is not so. Then all gifts may cease, the mission- 
ary rooms at home close, all missionary enterprises be called off, 
the missionaries come home. 



ANNUAL SERMON. 53 

What a nightmare! What a horror of impossibiUty! Well, it 
would seem to be, either — or. If it be the Lord's business, it 
ought to be pushed or dropped, not dawdled with. " Lord bless 
our feeble efforts " is a poor prayer for self-respecting folk to put 
up. The old-time Biblical answer to that cowardly and shameful 
attitude might be — nay is: " Son of man, stand up on your feet 
and I will speak to you." 

Different days must come, for God is not sleeping, nor has he 
given up his Son's gospel to failure. When those other days do 
come into our superficially Christian civilization, they will come 
with the whelming of a mighty passion. Passion — that is the 
word, that is the word of this hour, by which may the hour be 
remembered. 

The Passion of the Cross. 
C. Our third and last consideration is : The passion of the cross. 

It is not without significance that that great word " passion " 
has a double meaning. Its ordinary use among Christians is to 
refer to the passive suffering of Jesus on the cross. That has 
touched the heart of mankind. The pathos of Calvary has 
redemptive power so long as human history shall be. That proof 
of God's love, even for those who have scorned and hated him, 
this human race can never forget. It lies at the very heart of the 
Christian preacher's gospel. 

But passion has another meaning, — suffering still, but suffer- 
ing because of the drive from within of a mighty desire. It is 
that meaning which has more and more to realize itself in Chris- 
tian thought. The fact is, the ongoing of the universe is by 
impulse from within more than by compulsion from without. In 
human life all sorts of passions, in all grades of love and hate, 
drive the affairs of men at a stiff pace. But there is one passion 
to the indulgence of which one may give himself up with absolute 
abandon of surrender and all will be of safety unto salvation, — 
the passion to minister to any need. That was God's love revealed 
on the cross. Would we know how much God loves men? Ask 
Calvary. That is the passion we are bidden to share and show to 
all men. The real passion of Christ is what moved his whole life, 
including his death, namel}^, the passion to help and save. It is 
not only to provide a way of salvation if men will enter upon it. 
It is to go out with the passion of an infinite wish and will to set 
men into that way. It is the passion to spring to rescue when the 



54 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

cry of '^ Help! ^' is heard. We humans know something of the 
leap of the heart and body in response to that ringing call; what 
must be the passion of one like Jesus, over against the world's cry 
of need, and the call of the far deeper unuttered or even unfelt 
need! That passion was back of Paul's word: '' The love of Christ 
has gripped me," '' till it is no longer I, but Christ in me." 

It is that phase of the passion of the cross that is the actual 
cause of our assembling at this place this day. The young men 
whom we remember were on fire with that same divine passion 
to help and to save. It is the passion for souls, only amplified 
into something more nearly approaching the divine ideal for all 
human life. For the '^ kingdom of God " in Bible usage is not 
heaven nor in heaven. '' The tabernacle of God is with men." 
The kingdom of God is here on this prosaic earth. God is here 
or nowhere. Our work is to bring about the kingdom of God 
here in human life and human organizations. 

When we can once see it, the right soul is set on fire with the 
passion of it. Do we think we shall go on playing at missions — 
giving our dimes or quarters, or the mere overflows of our posses- 
sions, whether we be rich or poor; or giving the little remainders 
of our thought and interest and plannings and purposes — when 
once the passion of Jesus gets its grip on God's people? It is 
hard to believe that we shall reach our second hundred years' end 
without having come to some fuller exemplification of what the 
passion of Jesus may do in the hearts of those who now languidly 
bear his name. Would that there might go out from this meeting 
some beginning of that passion. It would most mightily change 
the spirit of our churches in all their life. 

"I gave, I gave my life for thee; 
What hast thou given for Me?" 

Do we imagine that there is no more call for great feelings and 
great deeds? Are the heroic days all gone? Is there for us and 
our children only smiling contentment at best mildly recognizant 
of great deeds of other years? Have we nothing on which to pour 
out the wealth of our best enthusiasms, but patronizingly admir- 
ing the great souls of the past, their great passions and great sacri- 
fices and great patiences and great works, as we read them in 
story and verse ? Ask Livingstone — dying on his knees by his cot 
in the heart of darkest Africa, after thirty years of his own life 
given, commending that continent to God and us — if there is no 
more call of God to man. Ask Mackay, the Church of England 



ANNUAL SERMON. 55 

martyr, missionary of Uganda, glad to live for and be counted 
worthy to die for the far worse than brute savages of Africa. Ask 
young Thurston, coming home to die, but falling asleep in my 
California home before he could reach his own in Massachusetts, 
glad to have begun to give his life for China. And Pitkin, dying 
under Boxer weapons for the Chinese in the spirit in which Jesus 
died for all men, consecrating with his last words his baby boy 
to work to save those who were murdering him. Shall we forget 
that pathetic -word of the son of Abner Kingman, name long and 
still honored in the history of this Board, this son himself having 
given up the health of a strong man in that North China field? 
This was his word of wonder, as he referred to Pitkin and the rest : 

'^ Tell me honestly, could they or we have believed that five 
years later the Church of Christ at home would not have advanced 
one step, but would even be letting slip the very precious fruits 
of their brief work, and pleading poverty as a reason for leaving 
half deserted the fields that had been their home? Could they 
•have dreamed that their devoted sacrifice would stand out so 
strangely against the background of cool indifference? Yet this 
has come to pass. It is for us to end the reproach and pity of it, 
and to follow them apd our Lord in a spirit of like devotion to 
the people they loved. 

" These broken bodies of our friends lie to-da}^ under the gray 
walls of Pao Ting-fu, and in far-off Shansi. . . . We cast them 
there. . . . We cannot fail to follow them in a like devotion, 
except at a sacrifice of honor." 

That rebuke may meet its answer some great day, when the 
love of Christ shall lay grip on the souls of the church people of 
our land. 

That Christlike passion of Pitkin's for China may yet do its 
legitimate work. 1 have the memory of two days at his college, 
down by New Haven bay. One is of the great football game of 
the year, with its forty thousand spectators, its passion of nervous 
energy of all the throng — for what? A mere game of not a fig's 
consequence as to which should win. The other memory is of 
the next day, a quiet Sunday afternoon, walking down the stair- 
way of the Christian Association building at Yale, coming suddenly 
face to face with the fine portrait of Horace Pitkin, with its inscrip- 
tion of eloquent simplicity. The portrait with its story, the look 
straight from its eyes into the eyes of every man of Yale who 
walks down those stairs, the lips almost speaking the call of that 
inscription — this may, some divine da}^, rouse in Yale men and 



56 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

the college men of America a passion, not for a game of passing 
interest, but for a life's work and life's gift to the greatest cause 
in all the world, — Christian missions. 

Why not? Are we so faithless as to deem it impossible? God 
forbid it. Men like these must not fail in their vision of the 
future, namely, that other men will carry on their work. In a 
right universe there can be at last no such outcome of despair. 
Our faith rejects any such finality. That would be to believe in 
death and not in life. And not only these men, but hundreds and 
thousands just as devoted who have lived whole long lifetimes of 
the noblest work man may know, men and women of whose fellow- 
ship we at home are little worthy. God may yet find some way 
to call us out of our faithlessness in spirit and in action. 

But we know another phrase: '^ The triumph of the cross." 
The movements of God in history are like the slow uplift of the 
mountains and continents out of the sea, a fraction of an inch in 
a century. Though our patience be sorely taxed, our faith knows 
no ultimate discouragement. The triumph of the cross, — that is 
our faith. But the triumph of the cross has always been and 
will always be by the way of the passion of the cross. '' Jesus 
. . . humbled himself ... to the death on the cross. Where- 
fore God hath highly exalted him." Not by the cross emblazoned 
on banners of crusading armies of devastation, but by the spirit 
of the cross in the lives of those who bear his name; the spirit 
of the cross in the conduct toward other peoples of those nations 
that call themselves Christian. 

Is this vision vanity — this dream that a church shall yet be 
upon the earth that shall know the passion of the cross? Shall 
Jesus never see of the " travail of his soul " and begin to '^ be 
satisfied "? Is Gethsemane clean forgot? Amidst the din and 
show and pride and anxieties of our human life God give a bap- 
tism of the Spirit and of fire of the passion of the cross! Under 
the inspiration of such vision this American Board began its life. 
Under some measure of that same inspiration its members, home 
and abroad, live and work still. Under the holier inspiration of 
the good success of a hundred years of blessing, with the broader 
and truer conception of the great work, we go forward to a new 
century of endeavor. The call is never, " Back to Christ," but 
always, " Forward with Christ." May this new century of mis- 
sions in all churches know a sharing of the passion of the cross, 
that the future may heed the rebukes of the past, redeem its 
pledges, and fulfill its promise. 



SERVICES OF THE SECOND DAY, 

Wednesday, October \0, 1906, 

AT WILLIAMSTOWN 
AND NORTH ADAMS. 



" The first personal consecrations to the work of effecting mis- 
sions among foreign heathen nations were here." 

RUFUS ANDERSON. 



"The new age stands as yet 
Half built against the sky, 
Open to every threat 

Of storms that clamour by; 
Scaffolding veils the walls, 
And dim dust floats and falls, 
As, moving to and fro, their tasks the masons ply." 

— William Watson. 



HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL DAY. 59 



HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL DAY. 

When the guests arose early to attend the outdoor sunrise 
prayer meeting in Williamstown at 6.30 a.m., a cold, steady down- 
pour of rain greeted them, but they made their way to the spot, 
and as they drew near to it heard the chimes of the Memorial Chapel 
ringing out the air of '^ When morning gilds the skies/' ^' Awake 
my soul and with the sun," and other morning and missionary 
hymns. After gathering at the monument, they were led into 
Jesup Hall, filling it to its full capacity of five hundred. A con- 
siderable number arrived later at the Haystack Monument, to 
engage in prayer while the rain fell about them. Some of these 
had left their sleeping-cars in the early morning at Williamstown 
and gone directly to the spot. Others came in constant succes- 
sion through the hours of the rainy morning until the clouds broke 
towards noon. All through the afternoon they kept coming, so 
that from sunrise to sunset that site was the place of almost 
uninterrupted prayer on this centennial day. 

The meeting in Jesup Hall was led by Rev. S. M. Zwemer, D.D., 
of Arabia. His brief address dwelt upon the ^' Royalty of Christ 
Calling for the Loyalty of His Disciples." For a half hour after 
he spoke, petitions were offered directed especially towards the 
raising up of more missionaries. After the benediction by Rev. 
James L. Barton, the congregation withdrew, singing as they 
passed out, '^ Onward, Christian Soldiers." 

When the breakfast hour was over, delegates to the Connecticut 
Valley Student Missionary Conference assembled at Jesup Hall. 
All of the following institutions were represented: Dartmouth 
College, Northfield Seminary, Mt. Hermon School, Williams Col- 
lege, Amherst College, Mt. Holyoke Seminary, Smith College, 
Springfield Training School, Hartford Theological Seminary, 
Trinity College, Berkeley Divinity School, Wesley an University, 
Yale University. This meeting was presided over by George C. 
Hood, a student volunteer of Amherst College, and the address 
was by Dr. T. H. P. Sailer, the Educational Secretary of the Presby- 
terian Board of Foreign Missions. 



60 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 



MISSION STUDY CLASS METHODS. 

A Summary of the Address by T. H. P. Sailer, Ph.D., 
Educational Secretary of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign 

Missions. 

Those of us who are interested in pushing mission study in 
colleges know that we have to work in the face of many difficulties. 
We have insufficient time and numerous distractions. Our work 
is so important that we cannot afford to employ any but the most 
effective methods, and so we turn to pedagogy for advice. 

The very metaphors we employ in thinking of the teaching 
process are important. We speak of filling the class with infor- 
mation, of hammering facts in, as if we were dealing with passive 
and unresisting material instead of with minds that could under- 
stand nothing unless they were active. The metaphors of diges- 
tion and development are better, but even these may sometimes 
mislead. 

There are four things necessary for successful teaching. 

(1) A definite aim. We must know what we are trying to do. 
We must think in terms of the objects we wish to obtain and not 
merely of the subjects we wish to treat. Our ultimate object is 
the development of missionary character. It is hard to give a 
satisfactory definition of character, but there are at least three 
essentials we must include: First, a sense of relative values, or 
insight; second, active devotion to ideals; third, efficiency. 
Well-developed missionary character ranks missionary ideals 
highest, is actively devoted to them, and is effective in realizing 
them. 

(2) The second essential for good teaching is adaptation. This 
means the selection and arrangement of such material as shall 
best enable the class to develop missionary character. The 
material must be arranged around a few vital issues. With the 
little time we can give to mission study, I believe that it is a mis- 
take to treat the secular features of the country, such as geography 
and history, apart from their direct relation to missions. The 
material should be well correlated, selected on account of its 
numerous interrelationships. We remember two things more 
easily than either one separately. Facts should be massed around 



MISSION STUDY CLASS METHODS. 61 

a few large ideas and then arranged in the most effective order. 
There must be plenty of concrete illustrations, so that the generali- 
zations of the class will be a result of real induction. The 
material must also be stimulating, and should, therefore, be 
formulated as a series of problems that shall challenge activity. 

(3) The third essential is self-expression on the part of the class. 
Repeating facts from memory is not seZ/-expression. We must call 
for opinions and seek to stir imagination and feeling. When we 
ask the class to close their books, we are advertising a memory 
test. The true teacher is willing to have the books remain open, 
because he is concerned not so much with what the text-book 
says as with what the class think about what the text-book says. 
Activity is a condition of growth; so we must exercise the higher 
faculties that we wish to cultivate. 

(4) Finally, we must prolong and gUide the activity of the class 
till it results in definite mastery. We can fix ideas and habits in 
three ways, (a) By repetition. Let us repeat and fix thoughts 
and feelings, however, and not mere cold facts, (b) By correla- 
tion. We can impress most things best upon our minds by study- 
ing their relations with other things. We should correlate facts 
and ideas not only with one another, but ideas with feelings and 
actions. When we secure some outlet in action we are correlating 
knowledge and will. The best way to fix some ideas is to apply 
them practically, (c) By intervals of rest. We often see things 
more clearly after we have slept upon them. The mind returns 
to a subject after an interval with new insight. 

These four essentials, aim, adaptation, self-expression, and 
mastery, condition each other, and all should be kept in mind from 
the first. 



62 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 



MORNING SESSIONS. 



At half past nine the chiming of the bells announced two 
services which were begun at the same hour. One was a com- 
memorative academic service under the auspices of Williams 
College. The other was conducted by Student Volunteers. 

The first of these was the most prominent feature of the Hay- 
stack Centennial Day. It expressed the welcome given to 
members and guests of the Board by Williams College. The 
building, Thompson Memorial Chapel; the occasion, reminding 
all of the century of progress in foreign missions; the speakers, 
representing New England colleges and the Baptist denomina- 
tion, together with the throng, numbering nearly one thousand, of 
ardent supporters of foreign missions who were present, — all con- 
tributed to make it a memorable service. One pastor, Rev. H. E. 
Peabody, of Hartford, reporting upon it to his people, spoke as 
follows : '' That church, with its noble Gothic tower, cathedral-like 
in all its outlines, is a very dream of beauty. If you love beauty in 
architecture it will repay you to go a hundred miles out of your 
way to spend a half day to see that chapel. More than a thousand 
people thronged its nave and transept at this service. A great 
choir of college men preceded the procession of gowned and 
hooded dignitaries into the chancel. When the choir sang, with 
exquisite beauty, in Latin, Mozart's ' Gloria in Excelsis,' and 
three college presidents discoursed on the sanity, the heroism, 
and the world-meaning of that old haystack prayer meeting, I 
could but ask myself what Mills would have thought, or what he 
did think as he looked down from heaven and saw his faith and 
his ideals come to their own in that solemn and beautiful service. 
Yet higher than all in religious emotion and power in that service 
was Watts' great hymn, ' O God, our help in ages past,' sung by 
the whole congregation, and the brief closing prayer of Washington 
Gladden, a prayer which took hold almost visibly on the throne 
of God." 




mmM"^ 



Edge of the Grove, with a Glimpse of the Haystack Monument. 



ADDRESS OF WELCOME. 63 



ADDRESS OF WELCOME. 
Rev. Henry Hopkins, D.D., President of Williams College, 

Mr. President, members of the great historic corporation of the 
American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, honored 
representatives of other great missionary organizations, distin- 
guished representatives of widely scattered institutions of learn- 
ing, who, having responded to our invitation, are here present, 
young men and women eagerly looking forward to missionary 
service, beloved missionaries returned for a time from distant 
fields, converts to Christ in far-off lands, brethren and friends, one 
and all : It is my high privilege to greet you in the fellowship and 
service of our common Lord, in whose love and service we are all 
one. In behalf of the college whose trustees are here met, and of 
the town, where many of you are guests, I rejoice to bid you 
welcome. 

Believe, I beg you, that this word '' welcome " is spoken in no 
merely formal and conventional sense, but with its full, broad, 
deep, warm, Christian meaning. 

You are putting us under heavy obligations in many ways by 
your presence. One I mention. This distinguished gathering, 
so sane, so high in intelligence, and so full of moral earnestness, 
is an impressive testimony to the character and value of the great 
undertaking in whose interests you are met. Such a meeting 
invests the cause with dignity and importance in the eyes of 
onlookers. It should bring pause to the flippant critic to see j^ou, 
such as 3^ou are, and to know that you pay the homage of your 
understandings and the highest devotion of your lives to this work 
of evangelizing and Christianizing the unevangelized and unchris- 
tianized in other lands than your own. There is what I might 
call a violent presupposition that you know what you are doing 
and that it is worth doing. 

Two distinct and contrasted conditions in college life are neces- 
sary if we are to secure the best results. One is aloofness from 
the rush and turmoil, the excitement and strife of the world out- 
side; opportunity for. undisturbed communion with the great 
spirits of the past, with the great literatures of the great races, the 
best thoughts and highest achievements of the best men of all 
times; full, unhindered opportunity for the clear comprehension 



64 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

of the outlines, at least, of God's new and glorious revelation in 
the advancing science of our own time; opportunity without dis- 
traction for these things. In every college there should be an 
invitation, in one's surroundings, to go apart for that quiet and 
solitude of the spirit in which ardent youths are wont to ponder 
the mighty questions of duty and destiny. The student who has 
not such opportunity is defrauded of a sacred right. 

In the ordering of our colleges we are largely neglectful and 
derelict here. The stir, the endless hurry, and the sophistication 
of multitudinous occupations and pursuits often makes high 
thinking, if not impossible, exceedingly improbable. 

There is a contrasted condition also essential in college life; 
that is, a comprehensive knowledge of and vital connection with 
the most notable movements of one's own times. This is entirely 
consonant with the other condition. The men of the haystack 
found it so. With a mail but once a week, aloofness they had, 
enough of it, and freedom from distractions; nevertheless they 
knew the world in which they lived. They were planning, not 
only for the redemption of Asia, but for the Christianizing of the 
new territories in the West. You know that it was in view of this 
that Mills exclaimed: " Would that we might break out upon 
them like the Irish rebellion, thirty thousand strong." He was 
himself the first Protestant missionary to preach beyond the 
Mississippi. They pondered deeply the Negro problem, already 
beginning to loom large, and Mills, after visiting New Orleans, and 
the south, went to Africa to found an American Negro colony 
there. The father of Dr. Edward Everett Hale graduated here 
in 1804. At our commencement in 1904 Dr. Hale read to us 
extracts from his father's graduating oration, which was a com- 
prehensive survey of progress for fifty years to prove that the 
world was growing better. At the time of the Louisiana Pur- 
chase, three years before the haystack meeting, they debated 
over it here in the Philotechnian Society. They decided, fifteen 
to one, that it was unconstitutional and inexpedient, — but the 
point is that those young men were deeply interested in national 
affairs. 

Brethren and Friends: We earnestly desire that the spirit of 
missions be kept vigorous on this ground and in all our colleges 
because it will help us in both of the directions I have mentioned. 
It will tend to a separation from trifling, to a noble seriousness. 
No one can consider the facts and problems of missions without 



ADDEESS OF WELCOME. 65 

being driven back into the solitude of his soul to ponder the mean- 
ing of this gospel message for all men. He will be brought face 
to face with the question of his personal relation to this growing 
kingdom and to its king; and then, on the other hand; interest in 
missions must broaden the mind and widen the sympathies, for 
the work is so vast in extent, so complex in its relations, and so 
enlightened in its method, that to know what is going on in the 
mission fields of the world is in itself a liberal education. 

Again, I know of nothing so likely to rebuke and to remedy 
secularism and materialism as the earnest attempt to enlighten 
and lift up, to help and to save men, — and that is precisely the 
meaning of missions. Young men in our colleges need impulse 
and motive more than they need information; they need the spirit 
of moral adventure more than learning. Here is a vast and benefi- 
cent undertaking, worthy of the highest exercise of the loftiest 
powers, inviting them. For the sake of the colleges, we must not 
let the spirit of missions die out of our colleges. 

From Palestine, once upon a time, there flowed forth streams 
for the healing of the nations; but today that land is desolate. 
One hundred years ago a fountain burst forth here among the 
hills, a strong fountain of living water. May we be saved from 
the fate of Palestine which has become a place of pilgrimage, 
interesting and sacred only for the sake of that which happened 
long ago! 

Faith in God laughs at impossibilities. It was so at the Red 
Sea, on the Mayflower, at the haystack. " We can if we will." 
But I confess that what chiefly compels my homage for those men 
of 1806 is that when they came to organize to carry out their great 
intention, they formed a society to meet " in their own persons " 
the exile, the toil, the danger, — no proxies. When in 1861-65 
it became necessary to march and fight and die that free govern- 
ment under the sun might live and not die, the young men of that 
generation met the crisis " in their own persons." They stood 
upon the fields where garments were rolled in blood and the earth 
covered its slain, in their own persons, and so they saved the life 
of the republic. God grant that in the service of God and of 
humanity to which the Holy Spirit and divine providence are 
always calling, this spirit of extreme devotion may never perish 
from our American colleges. High scholarship is fine, is alto- 
gether worthy, but self-sacrifice in love is Christlike, is sublime. 



66 THE HAYSTACK CEXTEXNIAL. 

RESPONSE TO THE ADDRESS OF WELCOME. 
Hon. Samuel B. Capen^ LL.D.^ President of the American Board. 

President Hopkins: In behalf of the American Board I wish 
to thank you and your associates upon the committee of arrange- 
ments, for 3^our invitation to hold two of our sessions here, and 
for all your labor and service in preparation for our coming. 

Men and women at the front, as well as the members of our 
churches at home, have been praying for months that God's bless- 
ing may be upon this annual meeting. And native Christians 
have added their pra5^ers to ours. Offered in many tongues, they 
have all been understood by the Master. We can believe also 
that there is an unseen cloud of witnesses here, interested in the 
messages of this hour. The thoughts of the Christian world are 
focused here today. 

It is certainly worthy of mention that one of the chief features 
of the work of the" Board almost from the beginning has been the 
emphasis it has laid upon Christian education. Congregation- 
alism has always stood for an educated ministry. We have been 
sending to the front some of the best scholars from our colleges. 
The}^ have established among our missions a complete system of 
education from the primary grades to the full college and theo- 
logical course, and we have now twenty-eight colleges and theo- 
logical seminaries. One of the largest Congregational colleges in 
the world is Euphrates College, with over one thousand students 
in its different departments. 

Williams College honors itself when she gives honor to the men 
of the haystack. You have a proud history, and your sons are 
in all the earth; they have become leaders in religion, in philan- 
thropy, in the scientific and the commercial world. In the Civil 
W^ar they bore a brave and honorable part. General Garfield and 
General Armstrong were yours to train for their wonderful work 
for the nation. But the grandest thing in the history of Williams, 
that which will be her chief glory in all the future, is the fact that 
this was the birthplace of American foreign missions. It was a 
pivotal time in the history of the world, and God wrought here to 
make this the starting point of a new era. 

It was also the beginning of a new day and a new spiritual life 
in the college itself. It is a part of 3^our history that the religious 



RESPONSE TO THE ADDRESS OF WELCOME. 67 

interest here was at a very low ebb when Rev. Dr. E. D. Griffin 
came to be your president in 1821. His coming marked the 
beginning of better things in the college life. But Dr. Griffin 
declared that he owed his own missionary interest and enthusiasm 
largely to j^oung Mills, who was at one time a student in his home. 
It is one of the numerous illustrations in history of the consecra- 
tion and fire and enthusiasm of }'outh arousing those who are 
older to action. And your own honored father, Mark Hopkins, 
left the record that Dr. Griffin's interest in the college and his 
willingness to become its president arose largely from a former 
acquaintance with Samuel J. Mills and his knowledge of the 
college as the birthplace of American foreign missions. 

It is, therefore, most fitting on this one hundredth anniversary 
of the Haystack Prayer Meeting that the American Board should 
accept your hospitality and hold a part of its sessions here at 
Williamstown. And it is equally fitting that one who is the 
president of* Williams College and vice-president of this Board, 
and also the son of one of its greatest presidents, should preside 
upon this occasion. With great pleasure, therefore, I commit the 
care of this meeting to you. 



68 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

THE NEW PREMISES AND THE OLD CONCLUSIONS. 

Rev. William DeWitt Hyde, D.D., President of Bowdoin College. 

In a passage of Scripture, the plenary inspiration of which no 
skeptic ever dared to doubt, St. Paul declares that our intellectual 
premises are ever failing, ceasing, vanishing away, and that our 
spiritual conclusions in the form of faith, hope, love, alone endure. 
Every premise on which missions rested a century ago has changed. 
Yet the faith of Mills that " we can do it if we will "; the hope 
of Carey that " expects great things of God "; the love of Mrs. 
Judson, who sent her children from the ends of the earth back to 
the homeland with the words, " All this I do for the sake of my 
Lord," — their faith and hope and love, after the lapse of the 
century, shine undimmed and undiminished, and are the standards 
by which we test Christian manhood and womanhood today. 

The Old and the New. 

Let us first contrast the changed premises. Our pictures must 
be brief and roughly drawn. A hundred years ago God was a 
judge; the Bible a statute book; earth a courtroom; man a 
prisoner at the bar; Christ our advocate; the cross of Christ the 
price of our release; death the end of the trial; and eternity the 
duration of the sentence. 

These premises were sharply visualized. Eternity was pictured 
thus. Imagine a ball of granite large as the earth. A fiy walks 
over it once in a thousand years. When this solitary fly, walking 
over this ball of granite large as the earth once in a thousand years, 
by the attrition of its feet shall have worn that vast mass away, 
then the torments of the wicked will have just begun. The 
pictorial imagery in time became identified with the premises; so 
that in the middle of the century an orthodox divine barely 
escaped trial as a heretic because he ventured to substitute for 
the traditional symbol of punishment, fire, a combination of two 
diseases : one rheumatic fever, which hurts you every move you 
make, and the other St. Vitus 's dance, which keeps you moving all 
the time. 

The conclusion from these premises was obvious and inexorable. 
Reverence for God, obedience to his Word, gratitude to Christ, 



THE NEW PREMISES AND THE OLD CONCLUSIONS. 69 

sympathy for men, all combined to drive the man who held these 
premises to the ends of the earth to proclaim man's lost condition 
and impending doom; and to herald the tidings of Christ's offered 
way of escape. It is the glory of the men of a century ago that 
they drew this conclusion logically; responded promptly to its 
call; impressed it on the conscience of the Church, and wrote it 
into the history of the world. 

Our premises today are very different; yet we must beware of 
complacency or pride in consequence. If they are wiser and 
broader, it is not because we are better or bigger men than they; 
it is simply because God has been at work a century longer on 
our intellectual environment than he had on theirs. What, then, 
are our premises? and what missionary conclusion do we draw 
therefrom? 

God is our Father-Friend; man, his pupil-child; earth, a home- 
school; the Bible, a series of letter-lessons; sin, the unfilial, un- 
brotherly attitude; Christ, our Brother-Teacher; the cross of 
Christ is the price he paid, and we must pay for living the filial 
and brotherly life in a world of selfishness and hate; hell is self- 
exclusion from our rightful place in the Father's heart and home; 
heaven is the joy of fellowship with Christ and all true Christians 
in the service of God and our fellow-men, here and everywhere, 
now and evermore. 

What conclusion respecting missions follows from these premises 
of faith in our Father-God, and love of our Brother-Christ? 
Logically and inevitably this : We give the best we have to those in 
all the world who need it most. This general conclusion has three 
specific applications. It requires a missionary organization to 
bind supply and need together; a policy on the foreign field which 
shall meet actual and concrete rather than abstract and general 
needs; and an attitude at home which shall raise and sustain 
supply. 

The organization is ready to our hand. We are not compelled, 
like the men of the haystack, to wring the requisite organization 
from an incredulous and reluctant church. In the able and 
representative American Board, with its sagacious and devoted 
Prudential Committee, its resolute and resourceful officers, we 
American Congregationalists have a missionary organization which 
is a model of efficiency. One thing only is left for us to do, — to 
support it with the contribution of our means and the loj^alty of 
our hearts. 



70 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 



An Efficient Instrument. 

The true foreign policy has already been developed by the 
spirit of Christ in the hearts of the missionaries. To impart the 
new life of love that is hid with Christ in God is now, as it always 
was and always will be, the best gift the missionary brings. This 
he will offer at all times and in all ways, by preaching and teach- 
ing, by precept and example, by invitation and exhortation. Yet 
side by side with this proclamation of the gospel in its verbal 
symbols — ■ as the preparation for it, as the expression of it, as 
the outcome from it — will go the minor ministries to mind, body, 
and estate, to home and industry and morals. These special 
ministries will differ in different lands and races, but will agree 
in the common principle, — we give the best we have to those in 
all the world who need it most. 

How splendidly this policy is being worked we read in the 
reports from every mission field. Temperance displaces strong 
drink and opium; industry supplants idleness and gambling; 
decency banishes the Nautch and the dancing girls; sanity super- 
sedes mutilation and self-torture; smiling faces expel pessimism, 
and cheerful hearts avert suicide; modest self-respect succeeds 
barbaric pride; the dignity of womanhood and the sacredness of 
sex abolish the zenana and the harem; the mutual love of one man 
and one woman does away with child-marriage, enforced widow- 
hood, polygamy, concubinage, adultery, divorce, and promiscuity; 
compassion stops the slave trade and emancipates the slave; 
humanity forbids cannibalism, inhuman sports, cruel ordeals, and 
the torture of criminals and witnesses; charity relieves the poor, 
feeds the famishing, founds leper colonies and villages of hope, 
supports asylums for the orphan, the deaf, the blind, and the 
dependent, establishes dispensaries, infirmaries, and hospitals; 
medical science grapples with disease; education lays the founda- 
tions of a higher individual character and a better social order; 
justice condemns trickery in trade, bribery in government, and 
extortion in taxation; reason reverses the tyranny of custom; 
democracy throws off the frightful incubus of caste; and the 
spiritual worship of the God of light and love dispels the darkness 
of idolatry and superstition. 

All these things are accomplished facts and present forces, 
which we have simply to accept from the hands of our faithful 
and devoted missionaries with gratitude and admiration as the 



THE NEW PREMISES AND THE OLD CONCLUSIONS. 71 

magnificent expression in the outside world of the Christian life 
we cherish in our hearts. 

. It only remains to apply our conclusion to the attitude at home. 
It means that every person who comes to Christian self-conscious- 
ness in a Christian land shall face this question; " Is the best I 
have to give something which, considering my health and training, 
my temperament and tact, my versatility and resourcefulness, 
my freedom from domestic obUgations, is more needed abroad 
than at home? ^' Each Christian man and woman must answer 
that question thoughtfully and squarely. If the answer is affirma- 
tive, the man must go. He cannot be a Christian if he stays at 
home. The missionary life is the only Christian life for him. 

If the answer is negative, it devolves upon him to make a life- 
long and systematic consecration of influence, money, thought, 
and interest, to send and sustain the men and women who have 
the fitness for missionary work he lacks. In one of these two 
senses every man who will be a Christian, in the modern and 
cosmopolitan meaning of the word, must be a missionary. To 
make every Christian person face this clear question, and answer 
it in one of these two ways — that is the unfinished business 
undertaken a century ago, and handed on to us today. Every 
Christian a missionary, in one of these two senses, — this should 
be our watchword for the century to come. 

Undoubtedly this task is difficult, far more difficult in this age 
of steam and electricity, trolley and telephone, elevated and sub- 
way, manufacture and commerce, automobiles and athletics, than 
it was in the quiet rural life of a century ago. Yet it is the duty 
of the hour. Let us take it with us from this centennial gathering, 
back to our colleges and seminaries, back to our churches and our 
homes, with the certainty that it is the logical conclusion of 
premises we all admit; let us meet it in the faith of Samuel J. 
Mills that " we can do it if we will." 



72 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 



A MISSIONARY CENTURY. 
Rev. William J. Tucker, D.D., President of Dartmouth College. 

We cannot remind ourselves too frequently or too urgently of 
the fact that missions from this country began in the simple 
affirmation of personal duty in terms of personal power. ^' Mills 
proposed to send the gospel to that dark and heathen land, and 
said we could do it if we would." The records of that early 
comradeship, if there were any, have never been exposed, but 
the sentiment of the leader as thus recalled by one of his comrades 
is evidently true and characteristic. It accords with whatever 
we know of Mills through his diary and correspondence, as when 
he wrote in later years to a fellow- worker, '^ Though you and I 
are very little beings, we must not rest satisfied till we have 
made our influence extend to the remotest corner of this ruined 
world. 

No one could claim, even in this academic presence, that Mills 
and his comrades originated the idea of missions from this country. 
No one would claim that they created the feeling of obligation in 
regard to foreign missions. But we can all see that what they 
did was commensurate with the idea and with the obligation. 
They did not make the foreign missionary enterprise necessary or 
even glorious; they made it possible. While others, many others, 
were feeling deeply that the gospel ought to be carried to dark and 
heathen lands, they said, ^' We can do it if we will." 

It is this saying which has brought us here, and having brought 
us here I assume that its simple office is to set us right before the 
missionary tasks of our century. I do not say that other things 
were not said or done elsewhere in that early time to which we 
ought to give heed, but the thing said and done here has the right 
to our undivided thought. Missionary feeling was not lacking 
in the earlier days. Missionary desire was not lacking. But feel- 
ing was helpless, almost to the point of despair, and desire was 
bound. There was no movement. Then there fell upon this 
group of young men in Williams College the endowment of the 
sense of personal power, and missions began. 

The sense of personal power, so essential to the missionary 
spirit, is so wonderful a thing and withal so contradictory in some 
of its workings, that if we are now to ask for it, as we ought to 



A MISSIONARY CENTURY. 73 

ask for it, as the greatest endowment of our time, we ought to ask 
ourselves what it means. The answer is to be found here if any- 
where. I will try to say in brief words what it has meant to me 
as I have put myself under the reminder of this most affecting 
and inspiring illustration of the sense of personal power within the 
religious history of our country. 

The saying and the example of young Mills and his comrades 
has brought back to me and A'italized the paradox of our religious 
faith that it is the greatness of a task, not the ease of it, which 
makes it possible. We know well enough that w^hen religion 
becomes easy it becomes impossible. We know that in religion 
the easy things are never done, because the religious spirit scorns 
the doing of them — not the giving of '' the cup of cold w^ater 
only,'' which may be as costly as the drawing of it from the well 
of Bethlehem. But we forget, we have to stir ourselves up to 
remember, that the greatness of the task set before us is the chief 
sign that it is set of God. And yet there lies the unalterable 
truth. In spiritual things the sense of personal power seems to 
work almost without limitation. With what simplicity, with 
what naturalness, with w^hat freedom these young men thought 
of their personal duty to the world. Their sanctified imagi- 
nation was as free as their hearts' desire was intense. 

No need to remind ourselves for our encouragement that the 
work of foreign missions is just as great as it was the day it w^as 
begun. Every advance made, instead of lessening the task, has 
introduced new needs, new values, new possibilities. " Foreign 
missions " means today the human soul under the mightily 
increased A^aluation of the century; foreign missions means today 
men and nations; foreign missions means to-day the unity of the 
races; foreign missions means today the order, the peace, the 
progress of the w^orld in its wholeness; foreign missions means 
today the warrant for the promise of the kingdom of God on 
earth. Nobody will deny that foreign missions in our day means 
all this and more. When it means this or more to us, then we 
can say of our immediate part of the work, " We can do it if we 
will." 

I doubt if any one of the Christian ages ever needed as much 
as we need the balance and corrective of foreign missions to match 
the overwhelming appeal of the material world to the imagination 
of men. The difficulty in living the Christian life, in our time, is 
not that the world is so bad, but that the world is so great. W^e 



74 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

cannot meet the temptation from the various kinds of greatness 
in the material world except through Christianity at the full. 
Let us not suppose that when the Christian vision of the world is 
lacking there are no opportunities for seeing the world in persua- 
sive and satisfying greatness. If you are not able or do not care 
to see Africa as David Livingstone saw it, you can see it as Cecil 
Rhodes saw it. There is not a land or a race so remote or so 
humble that it cannot be exploited through its appeal to the 
imagination of men. To think, therefore, of Christianity in our 
generation, without foreign missions, and without foreign missions 
of the type and pattern set here, is to confess ourselves untimely 
Christians, if we be Christians at all. 

I have been still more impressed as I have put myself into con- 
tact with Mills and his comrades, but especially with Mills him- 
self, with the fact that the sense of personal power, personal 
though it be, is the most communicable of all spiritual gifts. 
There are solitary powers as there are solitary virtues. Respon- 
sibility cannot often be shared. I think more frequently than 
otherwise of Lincoln as alone. In contrast, the sense of personal 
power, such as that created by the missionary spirit, is communi- 
cable. It can communicate itself partly because it must. It 
craves fellowship and, therefore, excites fellowship. The normal 
unit for missionary work is not the individual, but the group. 
Power is multiplied many times when one man, looking even one 
other man in the eye, can read there the warrant for saying of the 
seeming impossible duty, '' We can do it if we will." This com- 
munication of the sense of personal power creates in men what 
St. Paul calls the quality of like-mindedness. It not only creates, 
it intensifies this quality until it becomes active, aggressive, com- 
pelling. The power of like-minded men set upon a high purpose 
is, as we know, irresistible. Jesus recognized it when he said, 
" If two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that 
they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in 
heaven." The work of agreeing, consenting souls is sure to be 
ratified. 

Let us not mistake the human sources of the motive power to 
foreign missions. You cannot locate this motive power in any 
popular uprising of Christian peoples or of the churches. You 
cannot carry foreign missions as you carry reforms. There may 
be times of special devotion and enthusiasm, there may be times 
of awakening and of enlargement, but foreign missions are for all 



A MISSIONARY CENTURY. 75 

times and for all the time. They are from generation to genera- 
tion, day by day. Where shall we locate the steady, as Isaiah 
says, the unfailing, the undiscouraged power, through which the 
high spirit of missions can be perpetuated and communicated? 
The answer Avhich we find here holds good in principle everywhere. 
The units of communicable power are in groups in some of our 
colleges and seminaries, among some men in the ministry and 
some men in business, and in some homes, each in itself a unit. 
Who and what were these units of power at the beginning? A 
few students — their names have become household words; a 
few ministers able to overcome the apathy or fears of their breth- 
ren; and a few laymen and elect women. You can enumerate 
them. The principle holds good with the relative increase of 
numbers concerned in the missionary enterprise. Here again the 
fact remains for our encouragement, the necessary complement 
to that of the greatness and hardness of missions, that God can 
set apart and endow some rnen with the sufiicient sense of power. 
Suppose it were not so. Suppose that we were obliged or allowed 
to commit foreign missions to the average sense of spiritual power 
in our churches. Suppose that the personal appeal for missionary 
service be withdrawn from the period of " adventurous and honor- 
able youth " and restricted to the season of calm maturity. 
Suppose that men who see visions and dream dreams be retired 
from the councils of our missionary boards. Suppose that the 
financial estimate of the boards be based on the calculation of 
world's wisdom, and not on the assurances of faith. Suppose that 
during the past year the home department of the American Board 
had lowered the mark instead of taking the risk of coming short 
by a little of the true and right valuation put upon the capacity 
of the churches. It is good for us, brethren, to be here, right 
here, as we are called upon to answer the pertinent questions put 
.to us by President Capen and his associates. They are questions 
which can be answered only by men when and where they are at 
their best. I do not put the college above the city as the place to 
deliberate about missions. I care only that in our deliberation 
we shun the region of the commonplace. As missions began, so 
must they be continued and urged on their way by men who are 
able to communicate the sense of power. 

But beyond these impressions upon which I have dwelt, as 
following from contact with Mills and his comrades, I have been 
impressed with the fact that the distinguishing and rewarding 



76 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

mark set upon men who have achieved the sense of spiritual power 
is humility. I do not know whether we may the more fitly speak 
of the sense of spiritual power as an endowment or as an achieve- 
ment, so closely does the human spirit cooperate with the divine. 
As I have traced the workings of Mills's spirit I have felt the 
constant influence of his relentless activity. Neither men nor 
opportunities escaped him. Everywhere, even to the last, he is 
the same urgent, undeniable spiritual force, — in college and the 
seminary, in the cities and on the frontier, and on the foreign field. 
He is never daunted by obstacles. His high spirit of independence 
is impatient of unnecessary aids. When it seemed as if Judson 
was likely to become a missionary of the London society, he breaks 
out to a friend: " What, is England to support her own missionaries 
and ours too? Oh, shame! If Judson is prepared, I would fain 
press him forward with the arm of a Hercules if I had the strength. 
I do not like this dependence on another nation when they have 
done so much and we nothing. Perhaps the fathers will soon 
arise and take the business of missions into their own hands. 
But should they hesitate, let us be prepared to go forward, trust- 
ing to that God for assistance who hath said, ' Lo, I am with you 
alway, even unto the end of the world.' " Determination enough 
there was in this young man, courage, independence, but not a 
trace of pride, or high-mindedness, or superiority. His humility 
found its most perfect expression in the naturalness of his service. 
Without the slightest self-consciousness, in apparent indifference 
to all personal results, he went about his Father's business with the 
simplicity of a child. And so far as I have been able to discover, 
the reward attending the supreme consecrations and efforts of 
all these first men was the honor of humility. So far, too, as my 
observation extends, this is the natural personal reward of the 
missionary service. The missionaries of my acquaintance — and 
the greater their personal power the greater is this personal 
characteristic — are men of simplicity, of naturalness, of humility. 
But in spite of this distinguishing characteristic of the mission- 
ary service, I am persuaded that the greatest obstacle to foreign 
missions in our day is the unendurable and unpardonable arro- 
gance of our western civilization. We have created an atmos- 
phere which is hostile to the spirit of missions. Whether at home 
or abroad we vaunt the superiority of the things of sense above 
the things of the Spirit. I do not see how we can long continue 
to be known as a missionary nation, how we can continue to strive 



A MISSIONARY CENTURY. 77 

successfully to render justice and to show mercy without learning 
better how to walk humbly with God. A part of our foreign mis- 
sionary problem, perhaps the most difficult part, is at home. We 
cannot long maintain one type of Christianity at home and another 
type abroad. The inconsistency is already hurtful; it may become 
fatal. I would that the word of rebuke, uttered with so much 
power by Arthur Smith, might be reiterated in our churches and 
in all our seats of power. I would that the Board might recall 
from time to time its missionaries who know best the power of 
humility, to tell us how weak we are in our pride and vanity. I 
would that, in some way, through the instrumentality of missions, 
God might convert the strength of this mighty nation into service- 
able power. 

So then, as it seems to me, these young men of simple but 
assured power are speaking to us today across the century. If 
we think of them in the light of their after careers, the result is 
strangely pathetic. The}^ all died in faith. Not one really 
received the promise. But in the very act of giving themselves 
to the work of Christ in heathen lands they gave to the churches 
the irrevocable word for foreign missions, the word which measures 
the greatness of the task, the word which communicates itself with 
power, the word of humility. It is the word through which alone 
we get our rights and our part in the glorious work of Christian- 
izing the world, — " AVe can do it if we will." . 



78 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 



THE EVANGELIZATION OF THE WORLD, THE ESSEN- 
TIAL CONDITION OF AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY. 

Rev. Edward Judson, D.D., 
Pastor of the Memorial Baptist Church, New York. 

When kernels of wheat have been scattered over a wide, fertile 
field, and harrowed in, they do not come up evenly and simul- 
taneously. A latent potency of germinant life has been distrib- 
uted through the soil, and, by and by, a single green shoot, 
here and there, emerges from the earth in anticipation of countless 
others that are to follow. It will not do for this single shoot, 
this early riser, to say: '' I produced and inaugurated this mighty 
movement.'^ Its thin, green blade is only the outward and pre- 
mature expression of a vast and varied tendency that slumbers 
beneath the surface of the ground and is bound sooner or later 
to assert itself in forms of verdure and fruitfulness. 

" The buried bulb does know 
The signals of the year, 
And hails far summer with his lifted spear." 

It is the same in the world of science and history. The Protes- 
tant Reformation was not confined to one spot. The same tremor 
of intellectual unrest simultaneously seized upon all the countries 
of Europe. The discoveries that have been waymarks in the path 
of the student of nature, as of oxygen, or of anesthetics, or of 
natural selection as the key to evolution, have arisen at the same 
time in the minds of different thinkers, working independently 
and far apart, as if the world had been slowly ripening for the new 
thought, and as if at the very center of things there were a troubled 
fountain of truth that could never rest, but kept all the time work- 
ing toward the surface and bubbling up at many different and 
widely separated spots. The friends of each inventor have insisted 
that he was the one original discoverer and that all the others had 
stolen the truth from him. Afterwards it has transpired that 
the new idea had not been communicated by one thinker to the 
others, but had arisen simultaneously in the minds of them all. 

The same law prevails in the religious world as well. We 
think of this green nook among the Berkshire Hills as the cradle 



EVANGELIZATION OF THE WORLD. 79 

of American foreign missions. We come here with unsandaled 
feet, as to a shrine. We recall the simple old story of the pious 
students of a hundred years ago — Samuel J. Mills, Jr., James 
Richards, Gordon Hall, Luther Rice, and others — meeting for 
prayer in the little grove not far from the college buildings. A 
thunderstorm arises and they seek shelter beneath a neighboring 
haymow. They enlarge for themselves a little hollow beneath its 
projecting eaves, and nestling there in the hay they continue their 
Christian conversation and prayer. The subject that engaged 
their attention was the duty of Christians to carry the gospel to 
the heathen in foreign lands — an old theme with us, but strangely 
new then and scouted by many Christians of that day as pre- 
sumptuous and chimerical. The question discussed was whether 
the missionary should be a pioneer or should simply follow in the 
wake of civilization. When the electric light has come into public 
and general use, turning night into day in our city squares and 
illuminating the interior of our homes as well, it is difficult for us 
to appreciate the obstacles that lay in the way of the original 
inventor as he strove for recognition and experienced opposition 
and contempt and friction at a thousand different points. So it 
is hard for us to whom foreign American missions are a hundred 
years old to put ourselves in the place of those few students who 
were entering upon an untried path. The immortal words of 
Mills, '^ We can do it if we will," crystalized their thought into 
a holy purpose, and kneeling down together they consecrated 
their young lives to the work of carrying the gospel to the heathen 
in foreign lands, and so their faith produced a new epoch in the 
history of American Christianity. 

Other earnest spirits, however, elsewhere had arrived at the 
same goal, and independently and by different paths. When 
these students of Williams came to Andover for the study of 
theology, they found there a group of men inspired by similar 
ideas, — Samuel Nott, Samuel Newell, and Adoniram Judson; 
and the first two men to actually embark on this high adventure 
were not of those who knelt under the shelter of the haystack, but 
Samuel Newell and Adoniram Judson, who set sail for India at 
Salem on the brig Caravan, February 19, 1812. 

The lives of these young men formed a great watershed through 
which flowed two beneficent streams. One expressed the mission- 
ary spirit of American Congregationalism in the American Board 
of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. The other bore to heathen 



80 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

lands the sympathy of the Baptists of Ameriba and found its 
organic expression in the American Baptist Missionary Union. -I 
rejoice in the modern vernal atmosphere of Christian unity. 
More than ever before we endeavor to keep the unity of the Spirit 
in the bond of peace. Denominational partitions are growing 
thinner. We emphasize the great truths that we believe in com- 
mon instead of the distinctive tenets that differentiate us. But 
I have always felt a peculiar kinship between the Congregational 
body and the Baptist communion which I represent today, not 
only because of the identity of our church polity, but because of 
that critical time when we joined hands together in the task of the 
evangelization of the world, and that at least twenty-five years 
before any other of the Christian bodies of America had under- 
taken in any organized way this holy crusade. 

The single thought that I desire to lay down in your minds 
today is that world evangelization is the essential condition 
of Christian conquest at home. The only faith that is adequate 
to the task of conquering our own country is the faith that is 
robust enough to achieve the conquest of the world. " America 
for Christ " becomes possible only as it is merged in the cry, " The 
world for Christ." There is no such thing as a nation being 
Christianized by itself. When Jacob, in the ancient story, asked 
the herdsmen of Haran to roll away the stone from the mouth of 
the well and water their flocks and go on their way, his purpose 
being to have a private interview with his fair cousin Rachel, they 
gave the inexorable reply, " We cannot, — until all the flocks be 
gathered together, and till they roll the stone from the well's mouth; 
then we water the sheep." The Reubenites, the Gadites, and the 
half tribe of Manasseh were not permitted to settle down in com- 
fort and security among the oak groves of Bashan. Their mighty 
men must first pass over the Jordan and help their brethren in 
the conquest of Canaan. We have here the illustration of a far- 
reaching principle. It is one of the commonest experiences of 
life that the things we desire most are secured not by direct and 
eager search, but indirectly — as it were, around a corner. They 
come to us when we are looking for something else. People do 
not become beautiful, or healthy, or eloquent, or popular, or 
happy, or even good by eager endeavor. If we apply ourselves 
intensely to the building up of our own church, we fail; it often 
grows faster when we are interesting ourselves in the churches of 
others. And our own denomination flourishes most when we are 



EVANGELIZATION OF THE WORLD. 81 

concerned in the furtherance of the great truths that make all 
Christians one. 

Now this familiar fact relates home missions and foreign mis- 
sions to each other in a most vital way. American Christianity 
can never be realized by itself alone. We shall reach it, if at all, 
via China and India and Africa. All the nations must be gathered 
at the well of salvation before the stone is rolled away from the 
weirs mouth. A pious zeal that ignores the heathen abroad is of 
very little use here at home. The most effective way of promoting 
a revival in your church or mine is to inform and interest our 
people in foreign missions. The most earnest evangelists are 
returned missionaries. A lonely worker in Assam may be doing 
really more for the evangelization of his OAvn country than a 
popular preacher in New York. The bane of the time is a near- 
sighted Christianity. A man who is trying to com^ert only the 
heathen at his door will fail eA'en in that. Victory afar off means 
spiritual power near by. Religion is a commodity of such a kind 
that the more you export the more you will have at home. 

We sometimes deplore the signs of spiritual declension in our 
own land — the dying out of the churches in the rural districts, 
the prevalence of worldliness in our city parishes, the love of 
pleasure, shameless and undisguised sycophancy toward the rich, 
a weak sense of obligation to the commandments of Christ, the 
falling away in church attendance, and the noiseless disappearance 
from the Christian consciousness of truths that used to be thought 
essential and precious. The cure of it all is the foreign missionary 
spirit. In every form of Christian work an element of egotism 
may inhere — the love of one's own self, of one's own family, of 
one's own town, of one's own country. But when the heart goes 
out to the lost beyond the seas, selfishness disappears. It is like 
the love of which the poet sings, which ^' smote the chord of 
self, that, trembling, passed in music out of sight.'' 

Only such a spirit as this suffices for the exigencies of our work 
at home. A rifle that carries six hundred yards will not fail me 
when fired point blank. The foreign missionary spirit is all- 
inclusive. An old farmer made two holes in his barn door, one 
for the large cat and the other for the kitten, forgetting that the 
large opening made the small one superfluous. The heart that is 
ample enough to take in the whole heathen world will have room 
in it for those who suffer by our side. I have found returned 
missionaries the best workers in the churches at home. When 



82 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

they have chanced to spend a winter in New York I have been 
glad to have them by my side. They have always been so sympa- 
thetic in every department of spiritual work. When I have 
endeavored to find some summer homes in the country for the 
children of the poor, missionaries have always been my best 
helpers. 

We must be sure, however, that our foreign missionary spirit is 
genuine, and not a fad. The sure test is whether we are interested 
in everything lying between the heathen and ourselves. To some 
of us distance seems to lend enchantment to the view. We burn 
with enthusiasm over the miseries of the people far away, but are 
limp and nerveless as regards suffering close by. We find our- 
selves greatly interested in foreigners when they reside in their 
own land, so much so in fact that we send our best people as 
missionaries to them and pay their traveling expenses, but when 
the Lord puts it into the hearts of these same foreigners to come 
to our shores of their own accord, paying their own traveling 
expenses, instead of rejoicing over their advent we are sometimes 
inclined to turn away from them in disgust. The Italians, like 
their own olive oil, seem to lose flavor in transportation over sea 
water. They do not look so picturesque near by. Such a spirit 
in us is only the semblance of the true missionary spirit, a counter- 
feit, not the real coin. 

In the foreign missionary work to which we have committed 
ourselves we seem, however, to be pressing against a stone wall. 
The thin silvery fringe of missions seems as nothing compared 
with the black overwhelming cloud of heathenism. A single life- 
time is too short for the accomplishment of anything. Two life- 
times have to be spliced together. We can only make a few tracks 
in the snow which those coming after us will see and follow them 
home. 

" Others shall sing the song, 

Others shall right the wrong, 

Finish what I begin, 

And all I fail of win. 

" What matter I or they, 
Mine or another's day, 
So the right word be said , 
And life the sweeter made? 

" Ring! bells in unreared steeples, 
The joy of unborn peoples; 
Sound, trumpets far-off blown! 
Your triumph is my own." 



EVANGELIZATION OF THE WORLD. 83 

Success and suffering are organically interrelated. If we 
succeed without suffering it is because others suffered before us; 
if we suffer without succeeding it is in order that others may 
succeed after us. 

But there are signs of promise. The ears of the heathen, 
according to one of their own number, are growing thinner. The 
universal spiritual need, which nothing but the gospel can satisfy, 
deepens. The operations of God, slow in their beginnings, hasten 
to their conclusion with thunder speed. An apple-tree is slow 
to come to the point of bearing, but a little time suffices for the 
ripening of the apple. The withered foliage clings to the branches 
of the trees, and is reluctant to let go, but a day comes in autumn 
when the air is full of falling leaves. The breath of the spring- 
time makes no appreciable impression on the icy fetters of winter, 
until, finally, comes the roar of the freshet. The lark shakes her 
notes together as she nears her happy home. The growing genius 
slowly gathers material for a story, but the plot comes with a 
rush. How often we find ourselves pushing with all our might 
against an obstacle which does not yield an inch to our effort, and 
then of a sudden yields and disappears. We look for a speedy 
culmination in the slow processes of world evangelization. A 
nation shall be born in a day. 

" Before the monstrous wrong he sets him down — 
One man against a stone-walled city of sin. 
For centuries these walls have been a-building; 
Smooth porphyry, they slope and coldly glass 
The flying storm and wheeling sun. No chink, 
No crevice, lets the thinnest arrow in. 
He fights alone, and from the cloudy ramparts 
A thousand evil faces gibe and jeer him. 
Let him Ue down and die : what is the right, 
And where is justice, in a world like this? 
But by and by, earth shakes herself, impatient; 
And down, in one great roar of ruin, crash 
Watch-tower and citadel and battlements. 
When the red dust has cleared, the lonely soldier 
Stands with strange thoughts beneath the friendly stars.'! 



84 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 



STUDENT VOLUNTEER SERVICE. 

At the same hour as the service which drew such a throng to 
the Memorial Chapel, a very successful service was being held 
under the auspices of the Connecticut Valley Students' Mission- 
ary Conference in the Congregational church at Williamstown. 
Mr. George P. Neumann, a student volunteer, of Hartford Theo- 
logical Seminary, presided over this. Addresses were made by 
Rev. John H. Denison, speaking upon " New Aims and Changed 
Purposes in Foreign Missions," and by Prof. Edward C. Moore, 
D.D., af Harvard University, whose address cannot be reproduced 
in this volume owing to lack of a full report. The closing address 
was by Rev. Newell Dwight Hillis, D.D., of Brooklyn. ■ 



NEW MOTIVES AND CHANGED PURPOSES IN MISSIONS. 

Rev. John Hopkins Denison, 

Pastor of Central Congregational Church, Boston. 

As we look back at the little group of men who gathered around 
the haystack, it must be with something more than mere interest. 
We are conscious of a sense of awe as we realize what a vast 
movement has sprung into being at the touch of their feeble hands. 
It is almost as if some one should pass along a mountain path and 
start a stone with his foot, and that in turn another; until down 
along the mountain side there plunges a vast avalanche, sweeping 
everything before it and changing the whole face of the country. 
Those at the bottom of the valley might well think it absurd that 
a human foot had let loose such tremendous powers; the result is 
so infinitely greater and so far removed from the cause which 
began it. The effect which that little group of men has produced 
is not to be measured by the missionaries that have followed them 
or the converts they have made ; that little group of men has done 
something greater. Their influence has changed the attitude 
of the world; from them there has sprung up a new world- 
consciousness; the missionary spirit which stirred them has been 
communicated even to those outside the church and to some even 
who disapprove of missionaries; in spite of themselves these all 
share in the missionary movement. I wish to trace the gradual 



NEW MOTIVES AND CHANGED PURPOSES IN MISSIONS. 85 

broadening of the missionary motive and of the missionary aim 
and to show how today nearly every right-minded man is taking 
some share in the foreign mission movement even though he 
knows it not. 

When these men gathered about the haystack, the missionary 
motive was a comparatively narrow one; so was it when I was 
in college. I was told by one seeking for volunteers that unless I 
could feel sure that all the heathen who had no opportunity to 
learn of Christ would be eternally damned, he thought it would 
be a mistake for me to become a missionary. This motive was 
thought to be essential in missions. It was the starting point, 
but in the onward sweep of the kingdom of God it has been left 
far behind. The feelings which are stirring men to an interest in 
foreign nations today are much broader and, perhaps, in some 
ways as deep. 

International Justice. 

The first new motive of which I wish to speak, we might call the 
Sense of International Justice. In old days each community and 
each state had laws of its own and these were not considered to 
apply to the outside world; they were to be just to their neighbors, 
but to foreigners and savages they owed no moral obligations. 
Might has been right in the code of the nations. Today a totally 
new feeling is springing up, a sense that we owe justice as a nation 
to other nations; yes, even to savages. As we see defenseless 
men wronged and depraved by the unscrupulous hands of those 
who represent the power of our civilization and who use its pres- 
tige simply for gain and lust, there rises within our hearts a spirit 
of indignation, that deep underlying sense of justice that is, 
perhaps, when once aroused, the mightest emotion of mankind. 
Though we have outwardly freed the slaves, the slave trade still goes 
on in a disguised form. In Portuguese Africa and in the South Sea 
Islands savages are bought from their chiefs by unscrupulous 
traders, carried off from their homes and made to toil, sometimes 
under the lash, and always with threat of starvation or cruel 
punishment, to fill the pockets of some white man. When I was 
in the South Seas I spent a day with a pleasant German who 
entertained me well. Before leaving the island I heard news that 
two of the women who worked on his plantation had been killed 
and, it was thought, eaten. When I met him, scarcely able to 
restrain my horror, I asked him if it was true. " Oh, yes," he 



86 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

answered; '' I dare say. It is a beautiful day, isn't it? " That 
answer of his made it more plain to me what would happen to the 
defenseless savage upon contact with civilization than anything 
I had seen. Here was a man, a pleasant companion and a gentle- 
manly fellow, to whom it was an absolutely insignificant trifle 
that two of these creatures who slaved on his plantation had been 
killed and perhaps eaten for food. As we hear of such things as 
these, there comes into our hearts a feeling that these ignorant, 
helpless men must not thus be left to the mercy of the greed and 
selfishness of our own civilization. These men who go out to 
them represent civilization, they represent us, and we feel a 
gathering determination that the men to whom they go shall 
have justice dealt them. If in no other way, we will at least 
send out men who will represent the good side of civilization, 
who will teach them what justice and mercy are, and who will 
compel those traders, who in the dark corners of the earth forget 
the standard of humanity, to do justice by those whom they 
employ. 

The trade in alcoholic liquors is no less great a curse and injustice 
to savages. Some eight million gallons per year are imported into 
West Africa today. The savage naturally has some human 
instincts; this stuff transforms him into a demon and beast. The 
pathetic appeal of the African king, Khama, must touch every 
heart with a sense of the terrible wrong which civilization is doing 
to these races yet in their childhood. " It were better for me 
to lose my country than to be flooded with drink. I dread the 
white man's drink more than all the assegais of the Matebele, 
which kill men's bodies and it is quickly over; but drink puts 
devils into men and destroys both their souls and bodies forever. 
Its wounds never heal." Missionaries are outposts of civilization 
and righteousness who insure to these people just treatment by 
civilization. 

An even greater evil has stirred men today. As we read 
Stanley's book on the Congo we are struck by the deep underlying 
religious purpose of the man as he toils unceasingly, constructing 
the roads which are to open the Congo to civilization. He 
endures hunger and hardship, the desertion of his men, the 
incapacity of his laborers, and, when stricken down by the fever 
and brought to death's door, he nevertheless rises up again and 
goes at the work with new enthusiasm because he believes he is 
bringing to these ignorant darkened races light and happiness and 



XEW MOTIVES AND CHANGED PURPOSES IN MISSIONS. 87 

a true religion. With infinite tact and kindness he wins their 
confidence when all others have failed, and because they trust 
him, chief after chief comes forward and signs an agreement with 
him to give up the jurisdiction of his territory to the government 
of white men. As we turn from this scene and read how today, 
in order to enrich themselves, these white men for whom Stanley 
made that contract of peace are burning whole villages and 
slaughtering men, women, and children, are torturing these poor 
defenseless creatures, lopping off their hands and feet, as we begin 
to understand what is being done with this contract which an 
American, our representative, made in the name of civilization, 
and by means of their faith in him, with these savage tribes, there 
begins to rise within this nation, yes, and abroad, a deep sullen 
wrath, the like of which has never been seen in the world before. 
The world's conscience has been outraged, the world's sense of 
justice has been violated, the treaty of Civilization with the help- 
less and defenseless has been hideously forgotten; and from every 
nation that claims civilization and humanity, like a deep, ominous 
growl rises the voice of the " World Justice," so long asleep, but 
now awakening in wrath. When has this happened before in the 
world's history, — that all nations should be stirred to see that 
justice is done to savages? The sense of international justice is 
now demanding that there shall be mission outposts in every dark 
corner of the world, where there shall be men who will represent 
the good side of civilization, who will not suffer the defenseless to 
be destroyed by its unscrupulous power, but see that justice is 
done them. 

Cosmopolitan Responsibility. 

The second great motive is that of Cosmopolitan Responsibility. 
This is a little wider than the mere sense of justice. It is not 
only the desire to see wrongs righted, it is a sense of obligation for 
the world's betterment. Once a man's responsibilities were 
limited by his own household; now he feels them to be broad as 
the world. Today the man who is not interested in foreign 
missions proclaims himself a provincial. You know the man in 
the little country town, who is only interested in the items of the 
local paper, which inform him that Farmer Brown has shingled 
the roof of his barn, and that Mrs. Smith's hen has laid an unusu- 
ally large egg. It is of no moment to him whether Hearst or 
Hughes win in the struggle for New York; he has never been to 



88 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

New York; he is a provincial. The man of one nation who has 
no interest today in the affairs of another nation declares himself 
provincial. We find that the immigrants when they enter this 
country have absolutely no tolerance for other nationalities. 
The " dago/' the ^' sheeny/' may die for all they care. Thank 
God, we are bringing them up into a wider vision, into a sense of 
responsibility for the affairs of every man in every nation. When 
we in our dealings with Cuba are demonstrating the fact that as a 
nation we feel responsible for maintaining order and peace and 
happiness in another nation, we give, perhaps, the most striking 
testimony to the influence of foreign missions that the world has 
ever seen. The true man of today feels through and through 
this consciousness; his inmost soul cries out, '' I am a citizen of 
the world, and I count nothing in all its borders alien to me." 
We are bound to its farthest confines by commerce; we are secur- 
ing our comfort and gratifying our appetite by the toil and the 
labor of all the heathen nations. Shall we say, '' I have no respon- 
sibility to these men? " Will any man today dare to say, '' I am 
interested in the savages of the Congo; they shall toil to provide 
me with rubber that I may be sheltered from the rain; they must 
minister to my comfort, but if they are burned to death in doing 
it, what is that to me? I only want work from them; I care 
nothing whether they are happy or whether they die in agony? " 
No man today dares say that. Nor can you say: '^ I wish the 
women of Tjarkey to toil making rugs, that my rooms may be 
beautiful and that my feet may tread softly, but I care not whether 
they are treated as mere animals, the slaves of man's lust. It 
makes no difference to me that they live in ignorance and bondage; 
all I want is my comfort and I will get it from them in any way I 
can." Nor again can we say today: '^ I will secure rice and tea 
for my table from China, but it makes no difference to me what 
happens to the men who produce it; their souls may be mutilated; 
they may be living in darkness and despair for lack of that which 
I have, but so long as I get my rice and tea their misery is noth- 
ing to me." The day has gone by when men can say such things, 
and everywhere in men's hearts is this rising sense of Cosmopoli- 
tan Responsibility. 

The Christian Motive. 

It is these two motives of International Justice and Cosmo- 
politan Responsibility that are laying hold upon the outside 



NEW MOTIVES AND CHANGED PURPOSES IN MISSIONS. 89 

world and making it cooperate in the mission movement. It is 
a far deeper motive, however, which has laid hold upon our hearts, 
who are at the center of the movement, and who are to form its 
backbone. The motive that stirs you is essentially Christian, in 
the sense that it is vitally connected with Christ himself; the 
other motives, though they sprang from him, are not recognized 
as having such a connection by the outside world. Once the 
motive that urged men to foreign missions was the command of 
Christ, " Go ye into all the world." Today we have got beyond 
a mere command or a mere sense of duty. Once the motive was 
that God was the universal Father and King, and that it was the 
duty of a Christian to make all men recognize this fact. We have 
got even beyond the fatherhood of God today, to its first great 
corollary. " One is your father, even God " says the Scripture, 
but it adds, " And all ye are brothers." A little while ago men 
felt only the first half of this. They recognized that God was their 
Father and felt it; but they did not feel that savages were their 
brothers, or Turks or Chinamen; if they worked for them it was 
usually at the Father's command and not because they felt this 
unity with the brother. Today, thank God, we are beginning 
to feel this. It is the same Holy Spirit that has stirred men all 
through past ages, but that Spirit has begun to produce a new 
and sweeter fruit on the old human stalk. If you discover some 
unknown man lying hurt in the midst of a crowd you may pass 
him by unheeding, but if upon looking at his face you see that he 
is your own brother, you will rush into the midst of that crowd 
and not give up until everything has been done to help him that 
can be done. So, when you look into the face of some man on the 
farthest side of the world, and because of some touch of nature or 
of God that reveals your kinship the feeling suddenly comes over 
you, " This man is my brother," then you are going to toil for 
that man and leave no stone unturned to bring to him the help he 
needs. This was the spirit of Christ. He did not help men from 
a sense of duty merel)^; he had got beyond that; he helped men 
because when he looked at their distress there rose within his heart 
a great unconquerable love that possessed him and acted through 
his hands and spoke through his lips. He could feel men were 
his brothers, even though they scourged him and mocked him and 
nailed him to the cross. This Avas the passion of Christ for the 
world, this great instinctive consciousness of brotherhood. The 
fatherhood of God is just as necessary today, and the command 



90 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

of Christ also, as a beginning; but at last we are beginning to 
really feel the brotherhood which he commanded us to express. 
The spirit of Christ has entered our hearts, and when we see a 
brother man, white, black, red, or yellow, who is wounded in soul, 
deceived, helpless, and in darkness, that great instinctive passion 
begins to rise up in our souls and urge us resistlessly forward to 
give him help. We cannot stand apart and look on. The third 
great motive, then, is the Compulsion of Universal Brotherhood. 
It is this which is in the heart of the Church of Christ today. 

The Aim of Missions. 
We come now to the aim of the missionary of today. Once it 
may have been the aim of the foreign missionary to induce indi- 
viduals here and there to accept a certain creed; he was content 
with this. This does not satisfy us today because we know there 
are men here who accept the whole Westminster Confession and 
the Thirty-Nine Articles, and yet are cruel to their employees, 
dishonest in their relations with government, and unkind to their 
own families; and we are convinced that these men are no nearer 
God than the creedless savage, if as near. There was a time when 
the functions of the missionary ended with the saving of individual 
souls from future torment; there was a time in the world when 
the aim of a Christian was to get his soul saved once and then to 
wall it up in a convent cell where no earthly contamination could 
again defile it. Sometimes we wish we could still hold this view. 
But today we are convinced that a man is not truly saved who 
cannot treat his own family with kindness, or be honest and true 
in all his relations with other men. We are not interested in 
saving men's souls and leaving them to abuse their relatives and 
defraud their neighbors while they continue to make pious prayers 
in religious meetings. The aim which we have in view today is 
the salvation of the community, not of the individual alone. If 
it were possible to convert each individual soul, and then seal them 
all up in separate glass cases, to be kept till the day of judgment, 
missions would be an easy matter. When these souls are con- 
tinually meeting, day after day, in the little frictions of family life, 
in the little antagonisms of the social order and the struggle of 
business life, it is a very different matter to make them, in all these 
relationships, maintain the spirit of Christ, so that those who 
look at the community life will say, " This is a Christian family, 
a Christian city, a Christian nation." The missionary today can- 



NEW MOTIVES AXD CHANGED PUKPOSES IN MISSIONS. 91 

not be satisfied with the conversion of any individual until in all 
his relations with other men he expresses the spirit of love and 
truth which is the spirit of Christ. We have not accomplished 
this here in America yet. We are fighting the same battle on the 
home field and abroad; the great question in each city and each 
community is, ^^ Shall this community be possessed by Christ and 
his spirit, or by commercialism, selfishness, and the worship of the 
almighty dollar? '^ Every community is organized around the idea 
of a god of some kind. This god governs them and gives to them 
their ideals. In the Fiji Islands the difficulty was not so much 
that the men were any more brutal by nature than we; it was 
their gods that were brutal, their ideals were cruel. A chief there 
nerved himself with the same effort of will to slaughter human 
beings and crush out every particle of mercy as that with which 
we nerve ourselves to some high moral effort. When, as was the 
case with one chief, he knocked his wife on the head and killed 
her and cooked her, it was not that it was easy; it was hard. It 
was the ideal of the cruel chief that he was seeking to realize. 
This ideal organized the community. Now'it is the spirit of Christ 
that organizes every community in the Fiji Islands; it is Christ 
who is their ideal. In all their relations they are trying to be like 
him. The community has been saved. It is not merely that one 
individual here and there has been plucked from the flames of hell. 
A new social order has been produced. 

. It is this which China and Japan are demanding today, some 
religion which will save their industrial and national life. One 
statesman after another is saying: '^ Buddhism is a religion of the 
past ; Confucianism, though high in its moral tone, lacks vitality ; it 
cannot reach the common man; we must get from the West some 
religion that has in it the vital power which will save the community 
or we are lost." It is not so much a question of sending a man to an 
individual Chinaman and telling him that he must change his form 
of religion or be lost; the question of today is: " Are we able to 
supply these Eastern nations who feel that their old religions are 
failing, and that their communal and national life is lacking in 
power and on the verge of disintegration, a religion which will save 
them and fill them with that spirit of love and of service to God 
and to man which alone can produce peace and happiness and 
progress? '' 

New methods have also been added, as well as new aims, to 
the old one with which that little group first set out. The first 



92 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

method of the missionary was to preach, to tell the message of 
Christ's love, to express his spirit in words. Today men demand 
something more, they become a little suspicious of those who only 
express their religion in words. They do not believe in the love 
of a man who meets some poor wretch in distress and talks about 
his love for him and his soul, but will not do the smallest thing to 
help his present need. It is for this reason that Dr. Grenfell has 
gained such a hold on those ordinarily not interested in missions. 
He has other ways of expressing Christian love than by mere 
words. The important thing is, of course, to make a man feel the 
love of God in Christ. When Jesus sent out his disciples to pro- 
claim the coming of God's kingdom, he said to them: '' Heal the 
sick, raise the dead, cast out devils." By their deeds they w^ere 
to express the power and love of God's kingdom. The new 
method which missions are adding to the old one of preaching is 
the expression of love in deeds. Through hospitals and schools 
and industrial work, through the medium of daily toil and social 
life, the modern missionary is continually expressing in a tangible 
way the love of Christ and the coming of God's kingdom; and the 
gospel which he thus preaches is gaining a vital hold upon some 
hearts which the mere word could never reach. 

The Test of Missions. 

What is the test which the world applies to missions today? 
It is certainly not the number of converts that is made. The 
world knows it is not so hard to secure names on a mission roll. 
The difficult thing in China just now is to keep men who are not 
fit to join out of the church. What the world asks is, '' What 
change has the missionary produced in the life and character of 
his convert? — is he more like Christ? " Travelers are continually 
decrying missions because they claim they fail to make the natives 
any happier or to give them any higher standard of character. 
It is popular to talk against missions and to say that all their 
converts are rice Christians in search of money. In Hong Kong 
I heard one young man talking after this fashion to several 
travelers. I asked him if it were truly as he said. He hesitated 
and then answered, " I suppose I ought to believe in mission con- 
verts, for one saved my life once." He had been knocked over- 
board while steering a junk down stream in the winter time; he 
was taken on board nearly frozen, and it was then that a native 
came forward and stripped off his own clothing to put on this 



NEW MOTIVES AND CHANGED PURPOSES IN MISSIONS. 93 

stranger to keep him warm. All night the Chinaman shivered in 
his thin undergarments. When the Englishman looked for him 
next day he found that he had gone away without even a thought 
of a reward. He was a Christian convert and had done what he 
did for Christ's sake. If a man whose life has been saved through 
the self-sacrifice of a Christian convert will announce to travelers 
that all converts are rice Christians we may judge of the preva- 
lence and value of such talk. It is this transformation of char- 
acter which commends missions to the world. When we see men, 
once brutal cannibals, engaged in every atrocity of lust and 
murder, transformed into humble, kindly men whose only aim 
is to express the Christian spirit of love, as I have seen them with 
my own eyes, we then realize that in missions is the one great 
power to transform the world, the one thing which all men every- 
where have need of for their happiness and peace and progress. 
We see, then, that the old missionary motive has been broadening 
and deepening in the hearts of men until all the world feels to a 
certain extent this sense of cosmopolitan responsibility, this com- 
pulsion of universal brotherhood. We see a new and greater aim 
in missions, the salvation not merely of the individual, but of the 
community. We are to preach, not to individuals, but to nations, 
and baptize them. We understand that this must be done not in 
one way alone, by words, but all along the path of life by helpful 
deeds. We know that the only test we can apply is that of Jesus 
Christ, '' By their fruits ye shall know them." And we today 
can thank God that our faith in Christ is founded not upon tradi- 
tion or dogma, but upon that which our own eyes have seen of his 
power to transform individuals and communities and nations into 
the likeness of the sons of God. This is the victory that over- 
comes the world, even our faith, that Christianity is the only 
power known among men adequate to save not merely the indi- 
vidual but the nation, to redeem not merely a few families but 
the whole organized social order of mankind. 



94 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 



THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THIS ANNIVERSARY. 

Rev. Newell Dwight Hillis, D.D., 

Pastor of Plymouth Congregational Church, Brooklyn. 

The completion of one hundred years since Mills and his com- 
panions met here is an event of world-wide interest. On this 
Wednesday a thousand public men of this country assemble here 
in Williamstown, beside a monument that marks the site of the 
Haystack Prayer Meeting. London celebrates by an all-day 
meeting in the City Temple. There will be meetings and addresses 
in Honolulu and Yokohama, in Shanghai and in Bangkok, in 
Madras and Bombay, and the world-wide influence of this move- 
ment fully justifies a world-wide interest. From the view point 
of material force, the saiHng of that battleship to Cuba was a 
more dramatic event. But measured by relations to the welfare 
of the family of man, the whole Spanish War will receive but a 
chapter, where history will give a volume to the place of the 
American Board in the nineteenth century. Six years have now 
passed since the new century began. These years have fully 
sufficed for assembling, ranking, and classifying the great events 
of the nineteenth century. In retrospect, we discern that the 
great political events were the expansion of England, the passing 
of Napoleon, the unification of Germany, and the new Italy. 
The great reform movements were the emancipation of the millions 
of serfs in Russia, and millions of slaves in the South and in the 
English colonies. The great events for liberty and democracy are 
diverse and immeasurable. For democracy has won, — educa- 
tional democracy through the pubhc schools, political democracy 
through universal suffrage, industrial democracy through freedom 
of contract, ecclesiastical democracy, in that every man is his 
own priest toward God. 

Invisible Forces. 

Nor must we forget the influence of tools upon man's progress 
during that wonderful century, — the engine that carries his goods 
swiftly; the cable, that carries his news swiftly; the ship that 
brings distant continents near; electricity in all its uses, and the 
X-ray. All these five realms of progress appeal to the eye, are 



THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THIS ANNIVERSARY. 95 

obvious to all observers, and with much noise make themselves 
known. But for the scholar, trained to weigh movements and 
measure men, a large place must be given in the history of the 
century to the movement in foreign missions, that has gathered 
up and included within itself reform, emancipation of childhood 
and women, schools, hospitals, commerce, physical welfare of 
tribes, new literatures, better laws, organized government. Mate- 
rial forces, called battleships, bulk larger than these, but the 
invisible spiritual forces go farther, last longer, and make cannon 
seem contemptible and paltry. In cold countries men sometimes 
build palaces of ice for some public function. In the hour when 
beautiful women and brilliant military bands assemble for winter 
festival, the water, manifest in blocks of ice, seems very imposing. 
But would you know the real power of water, wait until it becomes 
invisible. Then lift your eyes to the western sunset, where colors 
of gold and rose are revealed by this invisible vapor; watch the 
raindrop redden in the purple flow of grape and the crimson 
drops of pomegranate, or see it tossed by a harvester in sheaves 
of grain. Then, in what water does through its invisible workings, 
do we know its place in nature and its contributions to man's 
happiness. Therefore, historians often pass by an engine, a can- 
non, and a battleship, to note and measure some movement like 
that to be celebrated by this Centennial Anniversary. 

Humble, indeed, the origin of this world-wide enterprise. 
Long centuries ago, Christianity set forth from a manger at Bethle- 
hem and journeyed like a beautiful civilization around the earth. 
And this modern movement started with a group of five under- 
graduates, assembled in the shade of a haystack, on an August 
afternoon. All five students were under twenty years of age. 
All were inexperienced, not one had wealth, and yet they planned 
the most audacious enterprise. One of them. Mills, had been 
studying the progress of Christianity for eighteen centuries. He 
noticed that it had moved in concentric circles. He saw that 
oftentimes one missionary, landing in a barbarous country, had 
soon changed the religion of the new land. Young Mills, there- 
fore, proposed to his four friends that they organize a society to 
carry Christianity to peoples beyond the Pacific. There were 
one billion, he thought, who knew nothing about Christ's teach- 
ings of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. He 
proposed to assault barbarism, ignorance, and superstition, en- 
trenched in these thousand millions. 



96 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

Humanly speaking, it lool^ed like hurling feathers at some 
granite mountain, or sending five arrows forth against the north 
and Arctic wind. One of the young men, Loomis, argued that 
what was needed was a crusade, and an army to butcher the 
" unspeakable Turk," after Avhich missions would have some 
chance. But Mills stood for non-resistance, the gospel of peace 
and education. He pronounced this motto, " We can, if we will." 
Soon another one was added, '' Whatever is right is practicable." 
They then knelt down and consecrated themselves to the task 
of conquering ignorance and barbarism, buttressed by a thousand 
millions. And history has fully justified their courage and faith. 
There are now eleven thousand five hundred missionaries in these 
lands; meetings in five continents this Wednesday celebrate their 
centennial. London itself, with its throbbing interests, will 
assemble to recall, not an English event, but an American cen- 
tennial. These boys had no guns, but they fired a shot that went 
round the world. And today historians understand that their 
movement fills a very large place in the history of the nineteenth 
century. 

Concrete Examples. 

Doubtless a great enterprise is best set forth by an appeal to the 
eye. Witness the Tuskegee method of floats, portraying the old 
cabin and slave, and the new cottage and industrial life of the 
young Negro; witness our world's fairs, with their exhibition of 
tools, arts, industries, architecture. Fortunately, it is not expe- 
dient to use a float illustrating the cannibalism our mission.aries 
found in the South Seas. We cannot drag a Juggernaut car down 
the main street. A picture setting forth the burning of a hundred 
widows at a rajah's funeral would be unseemly, and I will refrain 
from dwelling upon Sydney Smith's baked boy on the sideboard 
of the African chief who entertained the English teacher. Indeed, 
this church and these heights would be too small for the floats 
and the exhibition. Is it literature that you are thinking about? 
There is no civilization or progress without language. Your 
Webster's dictionary is the gateway to commerce and trade for 
eighty millions of people. Well, Robert Morrison worked twenty 
years on a Chinese dictionary, that bulks as large as four of 
Webster's Unabridged, and beside that dictionary, these mission- 
aries will place three hundred dictionaries and grammars, by 
which we have opened the doorway to trade, knowledge, and 



THE SIGXIFICANCE OF THIS AXNIVERSARY. 97 

progress to eight hundred miUions of people. Is it reform? and 
succor for slaves^ children, women in zenanas, savages in their 
huts? The missionaries in India worked forty years before they 
succeeded in compelling from councils and governor-generals the 
edict against the burning of widows, the Juggernaut car, the 
stranghng of unwelcome female babes, the child marriages, while 
these are but a few of the thousand reform movements they have 
promoted. Sir Henry Maine's three volumes on ancient law and 
early society and institutions make a pile of books as high as that. 
But Sir Henry's volumes gather up the legal achievements of two 
thousand years passed. There are three volumes just completed 
bearing the title " Christian Missions and Social Progress," 
and these volumes make a bulk twice as great and far more 
important than Sir Henry Maine's volumes. The abuses these 
missionaries have fought, and the reforms they have achieved 
as to hygiene and water supply, principles of sanitation, safe- 
guarding the lives of infant girls and children in general, their 
work for women in China and India and Africa, their educational 
movements, their hospitals — why, this hour would not suffice 
for simply reading the names of the measures that they have 
fought to a success. Is it China you are thinking of? The 
empress dowager sent a member of her cabinet to assist in the 
laying of the corner-stone of a new missionary building in Peking, 
and gave ten thousand taels. Last summer a Chinese viceroy 
sent out a proclamation ordering the Xew Testament to be studied 
as a classic. The argament in his proclamation runs like this: 
'' The Americans are more truly heathen than we are. They 
make treaties with us to treat Chinamen admitted to the United 
States with all the privileges of Americans. Then the}^ break 
the most solemn treaties through their mobs, showing that they 
are heathen, and not the equal of Chinese. And yet the}^ have 
made wonderful progress. How is it that inferior Americans have 
surpassed superior. Chinamen? " The viceroy says the explana- 
tion must be in their superior religion. He has, therefore, ordered 
the study of the Bible and its use in the civil service merit exami- 
nations. 

Is it India you are thinking of? Lord La\M'ence, the governor- 
general, said that the missionaries have done more for India than 
the East India Company, the civil service method in India's 
government, or all other men and forces put together. Is it sav- 
age Africa you are recalling? Only a year ago, on the spot where 



98 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

Stanley's chief sacrificed three thousand men to accompany the 
spirit of the dying king, there is now a cathedral, built by these 
Christian natives, that is four hundred feet long. They have 
seven hundred and fifty young men and women in their normal- 
training school, and a railroad, a thousand miles long, to the sea. 
Today we have eleven thousand missionaries, sixty-five thousand 
native preachers (all the preachers in the United States are 
natives h), two thousand six hundred and seventy-five stations, and 
when you think of these stations, these are cities of light, these 
are centers of education and reform. Truly this is a marvelous 
record for foreign missions ! It more than surpasses the achieve- 
ments of the apostles in the heroic age. It is the brightest page 
on the history of the nineteenth century. 

Influence on Commerce. 

Even from the practical view point, this movement has justified 
itself to merchants and manufacturers. The governor-general of 
India once urged the East India Company to change its method 
and begin by sending foreign missionaries into each province where 
it wished to develop trade. He argued that they were buying 
raw material in India for England, and from England coming 
back to India with empty bottoms. He said that the only prov- 
inces that would buy English goods that were costly, were the 
ports w^here the missionaries had wakened the people up to a 
hunger for the comforts and conveniences that the missionaries 
described. And the argument is very simple. What if the 
American News Company should send a shipload of books to 
Borneo? The people cannot read. What if they send a ship- 
load of typewriters to Western Africa? The people cannot write. 
What if you send a cargo of sewing machines to the Hottentots? 
Well, they do not wear clothes. Wealth comes through selling 
manufactured goods. But savages do not want these conveniences. 
Now, think of what this American Board has done. Once they 
sent out a band to civilize a South Sea island. In the band were 
six carpenters, two blacksmiths, two bricklayers, one architect, 
two tailors, two shoemakers, two weavers, two farmers, one phy- 
sician, four preachers. In forty years after they landed, one ship 
a week unloaded its cargo at that port — that tells the whole 
story. Since then, the trade from New England ports alone has 
yielded enough profit to merchants in a single year to pay for the 
entire missionary enterprise. 



THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THIS ANNIVERSARY. 99 

Robert Louis Stevenson understood this. You remember that 
Stevenson speaks of James Chalmers, the missionary, as his ideal 
man, — that Chalmers who made plans to have himself landed on 
a cannibal island, and was finally murdered there. He cabled 
home for ten gross of tomahawks and five of butcher knives, these 
being coin current among the savages. Well, an English earl 
was encircling the world in his yacht, trying to escape from his 
cynicism and disgust and weariness of life. Landing, he called 
on the old chief, and said he was sorry that he and his people had 
become Christians. '^ The Bible is an exploded book," he said; 
'' nobody believes in God now. These are the things that have 
helped you," said the earl, pointing to his ship. The old chief 
looked at the blasphemer. " The missionaries built that school- 
house," he said; " taught us how^ to build all those cottages, gave 
us these sugar plantations, gave us our clothing, our books, our 
everything. Why, if you had come here forty years ago, when I 
was a boy, just before these missionaries came, we would have 
roasted you and served you up on sea shell — that is, if you weren't 
such a tough old sinner! " Then the old chief responded to the 
cynical earl's statement that his ship and he himself were the 
things that had helped these savages. He told the earl that to 
the west were the New Hebrides Islands, where the people were 
naked, used poisoned arrows, and were cannibals, anS suggested 
that he take his yacht and go out and civihze them. So quickly 
did he puncture the hypocrisy of the cynical, pleasure-loving, 
ne'er-do-anything, agnostic Englishman! Little wonder that the 
missionary Chalmers seems to stand over against ordinary men 
as gold is over against dross, as a loom or an engine is over against 
a soap bubble, or a mountain is over a drifting cloud. Little 
wonder that Lord La^Tence said that ''the foreign missionaries 
of India are the salt of the earth, whose shoe latchets I am not 
worthy to stoop down and unloose." 

The Heroism of Foreign Missions. 

But this centennial of the American Board recovers our faith 
in heroism, freshens our ardor for noble living, revives our confi- 
dence in the ultimate triumph of righteousness and justice and 
law and liberty. Of late the increase of mammonism and the 
breakdown of leaders in high places have lent depression to many 
public men. Much has been said about the coming decline of our 
institutions. Liberty has failed in the government of gTeat cities. 



100 ' THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

And those prophets of ill tidings have been very loud of late. But 
heroism plainly is not dying. The history of foreign missions will 
make a new chapter for Carlyle's " Hero Worship." The eleventh 
chapter of Hebrews was the roll-call of great hearts for the early 
church. When Paul was stoned and dragged through the streets 
of Lystra and left for dead, the next chapter says that when his 
wounds were bound up, he straightway returned unto Lystra. 
Because the adversaries were many, he went back. Well, our 
missionaries were murdered in China several years ago. But 
when the officers of the mission boards came together, our brightest 
and bravest young men from our colleges came forward, and asked 
to be sent straight to these fields where the ground was still red 
with the blood of these young martyrs. The London Missionary 
Society lost thirty missionaries, and sixty young men from Aber- 
deen and Edinburgh, from Oxford and Cambridge, competed 
for the most dangerous places. Last winter, in the Students' 
Missionary Conference in a southern city, there were three thou- 
sand in the audience. One young man from Calcutta described 
the work in India. He said that Madras and Calcutta and Bom- 
bay had thousands of young men that now speak English, that 
there were universities and colleges, all the comforts and con- 
veniences, book shops and hospitals, the coming and going of 
ships, but he said, " We want men for the interior of India." 
There the people are half starved, nearly naked; there are child 
marriages, there infanticide; the murder of unwelcome babes is 
the every-day event. There life is lonely, hideous, revolting, and 
yet there, in one lifetime, a group of brave men can transform a 
little province. He made the picture so black that no man could 
undertake the task, and when the conference was through, the 
finest scholars and most promising young collegians present came 
forward, and four students offered themselves to every one that 
was wanted. 

Heroism is not dead among the college men of the United States. 
Never was patrician courage more manifest. Carlyle understood. 
In his life of Cromwell he says that he ranks the foreign missionary 
and his convert with the greatest heroes in history. It is in his 
story of Kapiolani. These Christian teachers in the South Seas 
brought the queen to faith in God and to the new ideas of home, 
school, government, and social progress. But the people still 
worshiped gods whose home was in the crater, whose column of 
fire was on the sky. So the missionary and the queen told the 



THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THIS ANNIVERSARY. 101 

people that they would dare the native god. They made their 
way to the foot of the mountain. The people shrieked, wept, 
implored, but these two walked bravely on. They stood on the 
edge of the crater, breathing the sulphurous gases. The queen 
hurled stones into the abyss and shouted her threats and denials. 
When they came down in safety, superstition was dead. Carlyle 
says that a Christian missionary slew a cult in that hour, and that 
the event will always rank in history with Elijah at Mt. Carmel 
and the Christian convert who cut down the sacred oak of Thor 
for Germany. But foreign missions have produced scores of 
heroes and heroines like these. The history of missions is a sky 
that is ablaze with light that will shine forever and forever. 

An Appeal to Young Men. 

Many of you are students, new to the city, and here to fit your- 
selves for your lifework. Standing at the threshold, let me urge 
you to lay out your life on large lines. Do not be deceived by the 
nearness of the horizon, and do not fix your eyes on the path that 
leads to yonder temple of fame; but look up, and look out, and 
make the world the sphere of your ambition. Today, there are 
no foreign lands. These steamships have brought distant conti- 
nents so near that they are anchored just outside the harbor in 
New York and San Francisco. Have you genius in finance? 
What about these great concessions and opportunities, in Peking 
and Shanghai and Korea? Do you intend to become an educator? 
Why not be the Horace Mann or Thomas Arnold to an hundred 
millions of boys and girls in China? Are you looking forward to 
surgery and medicine? Why not found a system of hospitals, 
under royal patronage, in Burma or Siam or Korea? Are you 
looking forward to the ministry? A thousand adults made pro- 
fession of their faith in a single church last year in China. Do 
you want an audience? In Korea, not simply are the churches 
filled, but with warm weather last spring our missionaries took 
out the windows and the doors, that the crowds might hear, and, 
with the summer, went into the open air, where their hearers 
were limited only by the utmost reach of the human voice. Our 
foreign societies, eight in number, reported at the beginning of 
last year a million applicants, who are preparing for membership 
in the churches. 

A great forward movement is sweeping over the w^orld. And 



102 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

the foreign missionary is becoming the world rnan. You who 
heard those Chinese ambassadors at the banquet in the Waldorf- 
Astoria last winter, or who read their addresses in various cities, 
remember how they criticised the American sailors with their 
drunkenness, the rich American globe-trotters, selfish young 
commercial travelers, and, above all, the commerce of merchants 
that forced opium upon them and sold shiploads of whiskey. But 
they praised the missionary, with his school and hospital, his 
reform and his self-sacrifice. The historian has always praised 
him. Be the reasons what they may, he has gotten the first place 
for himself in the first chapter of the history of every nation. A 
foreign missionary, says Guizot, named Paul, brought democracy 
into Europe. The first page in the history of Germany begins 
with the coming of a Christian teacher into the forests of the 
Rhine. The history of Norway and Sweden begins, that it was 
in such and such a year that a group of Christian missionaries 
landed near what is now Stockholm. The history of England 
begins: " In the year 590 a missionary named Augustine landed 
on the coast near Hastings." The history of the United States 
began when the Pilgrim Fathers landed. Who opened the history 
of Africa? David Livingstone, the missionary. From whom 
did England receive South Africa? At the hands of Moffat, the 
missionary. Who is spoken of as the father of Burma? Adoni- 
ram Judson, the missionary. Who founded the little republic in 
Honolulu and gave us the New Hebrides? These missionaries 
who were the forerunners of commerce, law, and government. 
Don't say that it is a slow work. Augustine, in 590, found our 
Scotch and English forefathers cannibals, and they put off bar- 
barism like a cast-off garment, and rose to the dignity of the sons 
of God, within a generation. Hottentots? One of the most 
eloquent men who ever preached before Queen Victoria was a 
cannibal chief who, within fifteen years after Moffat redeemed 
him, was thrilling great audiences in London. 

The simple fact is, that man is made in the image of God, and 
that often a savage in ten summers has gone from a wild skin 
garment to the level of a leader and reformer among his people. 
Not enough religion for home consumption? Do you say we need 
it all for our own land? Christianity is kept only by giving away. 
Whatever goes to foreign missions is not taken away from home 
missions — it is only taken from luxury and self-indulgence and 
avarice. The best way to make Christianity triumphant at home 



THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THIS ANNIVERSARY. 103 

is to show our zeal for it in its triumphs abroad. God loves the 
man in the heart of China just as much as he loves you. He is 
working just as hard for him as for you. If American churches 
had not taken up the plans of that group of American students a 
hundred years ago, there would have been no American churches 
today. '^ Go ye into all the world." Who are you, as a disciple 
of Jesus Christ, who dare to challenge this command, or say that 
he made a mistake? What the world wants is not simply knowl- 
edge of God, and of a Saviour, but it wants powder that shall hurl 
that knowledge across the world. This is the crowning glory of 
Christianity. To a perfect truth, an ideal man, and a perfect God, 
it adds the power to propagate these truths throughout the world. 



104 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 



THE PRICE OF MISSIONARY SUCCESS. 

A Summary of the Address by Rev. Samuel M. Zwemer, D.D., 

OF Arabia. 

^' Now I rejoice ... to fill up that which is behind of the 
afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his body's sake^ which is the 
church." 

The price is as old as Calvary, and will never change. The 
apostle Paul called on himself and his followers to pay it, even as 
did the Christ. The sufferings of our Lord are without a parallel 
and yet St. Paul speaks of them as penurious, insufficient. The 
meaning for us is that we also are to lay down our lives for others 
— the very thing that all missionary service means — sacrifice 
of everything, even to life, to fill up the sufferings of Christ. 

There was never a church built for Christ's work, or a new land 
opened, but behind them lay the sufferings of the builders and the 
pioneers. 

Paul always held before his helpers such standards of work; 
he never allowed them to shrink from the path of duty on account 
of suffering. 

If we feel in our hearts the real love of Christ, we shall count 
everything in the world but dross compared with this privilege 
of suffering for Christ. Paul felt nothing was a sacrifice if he only 
won the people for his Christ. 

Are we willing to pay the price, or shall we sit still? There is 
work to be done, not only in the lands which have been partly 
won, but in the parts of the world which still remain untouched, 
a monument to our cowardice. Shall we follow Samuel J. Mills, 
not to mention "Jesus Christ? The devotion pledged here at the 
haystack will be lost unless we go forth on this mission. Shall we 
grasp this opportunity of investing our lives, the only life that we 
have? Thousands stand back because they are not prepared to 
pay the cost that mission work demands. This is the best place, 
the best time in our life to make the decision, and to say, '' We 
can do it, and. Lord and Master of our lives, we will." 



• 



MISSION PARK SERVICE. 105 



MISSION PARK SERVICE. 

When the belfry chimes rung out again in the early afternoon, 
the rain had ceased. Tunes that suggested the familiar hymns, 
'' Ye Christian heralds, go, proclaim," and '' Come, Thou Almighty 
King," were used to call people together for the great mass meet- 
ing in the open air. They flocked to Mission Park from all direc- 
tions. Soon all the available seats, two thousand in number, 
were filled and several hundred people left standing. 

This open-air service was led by President Capen. A prayer 
was offered by Rev. Arthur Little, D.D., which seemed to ex- 
press the feelings of thankfulness and reverence and missionary 
ardor with which all hearts glowed. 

Dr. Little prayed (in part] as follows : 

'' Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we thank thee for this 
welcome burst of sunshine, which we accept as a token of thy favor 
upon the services of this impressive hour. 

'' We desire to make sincere confession of all our sins and grate- 
ful acknowledgments of all thy mercies. 

'^ We realize that the place on which we stand is holy ground, 
hallowed by the prayers and tears and high resolves of a group of 
young men, chosen and anointed of God for special service. 
Make it impossible for any of us to say, ' Verily God was in this 
place, and we knew it not.' 

'' Help us to realize that a century of time and achievement 
finds its culmination in this unprecedented hour. Quicken, we 
entreat thee, our memory; chasten our imagination; enkindle our 
faith; enlarge our vision; so that our waiting hearts, tremulous 
with expectation, may become responsive to the inspiring influ- 
ences and messages that come in upon us from both worlds. 

'' May we find in this cloud of witnesses a fine incentive to nobler 
action. We give thee most hearty thanks, our heavenly Father, 
for the Christian homes in which these young men were born; for 
the exalted ideals of life and service ever before them; for the 
atmosphere of prayer which was native to them, for the revivals 
in the academy and college, under whose gracious influences these 
generous purposes of self-sacrifice for Christ's sake were born and 
nurtured, and apart from which the deeds we recall with gratitude 
to God this hour would have been impossible. 



106 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

'' Oh, for the descent upon us, while we tarry here, of this same 
gracious Spirit in quickening power! Oh, for a Pentecostal bless- 
ing here and now! Upon this college, whose name will be forever 
linked, in sacred associations, with this hallowed spot, we invoke 
thy blessing. 

" Grant, our heavenly Father, that our American Board may 
be permanently strengthened and enriched by the fellowships and 
testimonies of this memorable week. Above all, help us, our 
God and Father, to remember that the best testimonial to the 
lives of these young men will consist in carrying forward, with 
passionate earnestness, the work for which they would willingly 
have died. 

" And not unto us, but unto Him that loved us, and washed us 
from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us kings and priests 
unto God and his Father; to Him be glory and dominion forever 
and ever. Amen." 

President Hopkins read a letter of greeting from Williams 
alumni, sent from the American Bible House in Constantinople, 
in which they declared that the returns in that country were worth 
ten times the expense. Another letter was read from Mr. A. E. 
Street, of China, referring to the fact that he had given himself 
to Christian work at the time of the semi-centennial in Williams- 
town. The introductory service closed with a stanza of the 
hymn used by the five students at the haystack: 

" Let all the heathen writers join 
To form one perfect book. 
Great God, if once compared with thine, 
How mean these writings look." 

Rev. Arthur Judson Brown, D.D., speaking for the Presby- 
terians, turned the thoughts of his hearers from what had already 
been done, to the things yet to be accomplished in the next one 
hundred years. 

Here and there in the crowd were converts from various coun- 
tries in their native dress. Eight of them were afterwards photo- 
graphed, with President Capen standing in their midst, at the 
Haystack Monument. At this service they sat upon the platform 
and each one arose and in three minutes said in substance, " We 
are the fruits of the ' Haystack Prayer Meeting.' In behalf of 
our people who sat in darkness, but now see the light of Christ, 
we thank you Americans." This common message was spoken 



MISSION PARK SERVICE. 107 

in a variety of ways^ and all showed much ability in speaking. 
Of the two Chinamen who spoke, both students in Yale College, 
-one was a lineal descendant from Confucius and could trace his 
descent back twenty-five hundred years. The other young man 
was a survivor of the Boxer uprising, whose father, mother, and 
brother had all been murdered, together with the majority of the 
Christians in his native city, and who, himself, had suffered almost 
every form of persecution except death, but whose faith had never 
once wavered. 

The addresses of these native converts were made doubly im- 
pressive by the presence of so great a crowd, assembled at the very 
spot where Mills gave a great impetus to the cause of American 
missions to non-Christian lands. The " kernels ^' cast upon the 
waters so long ago seemed to have returned '^ after many days " 
in the converts who spoke at this meeting and the many thousand 
others whom they represented. 



108 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

OPENING ADDRESS. 

Hon. Samuel B. Capen, LL.D., President of the American Board. 

We are here upon consecrated ground. The. thought of a Uttle 
group of Wilhams CoUege students in prayer under a haystack 
on this very spot is uppermost in our mind. Men go to Waterloo, 
and Bunker Hill, and Gettysburg, and are hushed into silence at 
the memory of the awful issues that were there decided. But the 
results of that little prayer meeting went far deeper than any of 
these. It helped materially to change the whole thought of our 
nation and to save it from irreligion and skepticism. It put noble 
service for others over against the materialism of that day which 
thought only of self. Its very audacity was a challenge. It 
broadened the horizon, and led our churches to see their responsi- 
bility for the whole world for which Christ died. So far as America 
is concerned, trusteeship for the world was here born. It was the 
very beginning of efficient, organized, and aggressive foreign 
missionary work in the United States. It was a movement of 
young men, not to send others, but personally to go themselves. 
Much of the missionary work before this was fragmentary and 
inefficient. Men had been sent to the needy parts of our own 
land, but often only for a few weeks at a time. For pastors to do 
missionary work on '' the installment plan '' for those brief periods, 
and then to return to their own parishes, was almost '' playing at 
missions.'' These young men had now a life purpose and a 
mission to those who were still in heathen darkness. When that 
first vessel sailed for the far East, they went out into the unknown. 

The prayer meeting resulted in putting forces at work in India, 
Turkey, Africa, China, Japan, and the islands of the sea, which 
have changed and are changing them politically, intellectually, 
and spiritually. The influences that have gone out from this spot 
have altered the course of history and changed the map of the 
world. 

Here, where these five students met to pray, men and women 
have journeyed by hundreds from all over our land. Brave 
missionaries are here from the front, representing countries then 
unexplored and practically unknown. Native Christians are here, 
from nations that are coming rapidly from darkness to light. 
Nearly a hundred years ago Mills declared, '^ Before we die, our 



OPENING ADDRESS. 109 

influence must be felt on the other side of the world. '^ How 
absurd it all seemed! Yes, the same absurdity as when a little 
band of fishermen, inspired by their risen Lord, threw themselves 
against the Roman empire. These men won in the first century. 
Mills and his associates won in the nineteenth. God was with the 
latter as with the former. In the great passion of his soul, Mills 
burned out his life in twelve short years of service, but some of 
the mighty and worldwide results of that life and work we are to 
hear about in the exercises of this afternoon. 



110 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 



THE FUTURE OF MISSIONARY WORK. 

Rev. Arthur Judson Brown, D.D., 
Secretary of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, New York. 

A SON of Massachusetts, with sacred memories of Congrega- 
tional parents, bred to reverence for the American Board, it is a 
great privilege to bring to you today the congratulations of the 
Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, your nearest blood- 
relation. We rejoice in your noble past. We share your inspi- 
ration on this memorable occasion. We would enter with you into 
a larger consecration for the future. 

Standing on a spot which teems with historic associations, the 
temptation is strong to dwell upon the glories of the past. But 
we should ill use this hour if we spent it merely in praising what 
our predecessors did. We shall best enter into their spirit and 
follow their example, if we consider our duty as they considered 
theirs. Like them, therefore, let us look today, not toward the 
dead past, inspiring as it is, but toward the living future, as it is 
interpreted by the present providences of God. 

Prophecy is hazardous. Still, the missionary as well as the 
statesman, the general, and the business man, must try to fore- 
cast coming events. This is partly to prepare for them, partly 
to shape them. True, God makes the future, but God expects 
man to work with him and for him, and the man who does this 
with faith and courage has no small influence in shaping the 
future. " Do not cross a bridge until you get to it" is an old 
adage, but the man who follows that advice will often fail to 
find the bridge. It is wiser to try to find out where the bridges 
are, and, if they are not where we want them, to make some. 
Even if we never use them, it will do no harm to have a few 
extra ones; they may help some one else. In the attempt to 
forecast the future we must, of course, recognize our limitations. 
It would have been difficult for any one a hundred years ago to 
foresee the conditions that exist today. We must not make up 
our minds as to what we think ought to happen, and then simply 
project our own wishes into tomorrow. The only safe course is 
to adopt the inductive method of modern science, and from the 
study of present conditions and manifest tendencies determine 



THE FUTURE OF MISSIONARY WORK. Ill 

what our policy should be^ Now, making all due allowance for 
man's ignorance of the future and his proneness to regard as 
certain what he wishes to come to pass, are there not a few out- 
standing facts from which an induction may fairly be made? 

First, missionary work must be conducted in the future amid 
changed conditions. When the Haystack Prayer Meeting Avas 
held, the greater part of the heathen world was closed. Mission- 
ary work was largely influenced by the fact that few lands were 
open, and that even in them only the fringes could be touched. 
But today no waters are too remote for the modern steamer. 
Its smoke trails across every sea and far up every navigable 
stream. It has carried locomotives which are speeding across 
the steppes of Siberia, through the valleys of Japan, across the 
uplands of Burma, over the mountains of Asia Minor, and 
through the very heart of the Dark Continent. The traveler 
takes his meals in a dining-car in Korea. He thunders on a rail- 
way train up to the very gates of the capital of China, while in 
the Holy Land the brakeman noisily bawls, '^ Jerusalem the next 
stop." " Yankee bridge builders have cast up a highway in the 
desert where the chariot of Cambyses was swallowed up by the 
sands. The steel of Pennsylvania spans the Atbara, makes a 
road to Meroe/'and crosses the rivers of Peru, while the " forty 
centuries " which Napoleon said looked down from the pyramids, 
see not the armies of France, but the engines of America. These 
things mean the accessibility of the non-Christian world, that in 
the era upon which we have entered the missionary of the cross 
can go anywhere. And if he can go, he ought to go. Oppor- 
tunity is obligation. With the world before us, we must plan 
our work on a vaster scale. 

Politically, too, great transformations have occurred which 
profoundly affect missionary work. Large areas of the non- 
Christian world are now ruled by the so-called Christian nations. 
Nearly one half of Asia, ten elevenths of Africa, and practically 
all of the island world are under nominally Christian govern- 
ments, while some other countries have come so far under Western 
influences as to be from this view point under almost the same 
conditions. The political idea that has been developed by Chris- 
tianity is becoming well-known throughout the whole non-Chris- 
tian world and is causing changes which the missionary statesman 
must consider. 

Commercially, too, conditions have changed. The products of 



112 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

the Western world are now to be found in almost every part of 
Asia and Africa. The old days of cheap living have passed away. 
The knowledge of modern inventions and of other foods and articles 
has created new wants. The Chinese peasant is no longer content 
to burn bean oil ; he wants kerosene. Scores of humble Laos homes 
are lighted by American lamps. The narrow streets of Canton are 
brilliant with German chandeliers. There are twenty-seven 
foreign clocks in the private apartments of the emperor of China 
and nineteen in a single room of the empress dowager's palace, 
while cheaper ones tick to the delighted wonder of myriads of 
humbler people. The ambitious Syrian scorns the mud roof of 
his ancestors, and will only be satisfied with bright red tiles im- 
ported from France. In almost every Asiatic city, shops are 
crowded with articles of foreign manufacture. '' Made in Ger- 
many '' is a familiar phrase the world over. At a banquet given 
to the foreign ministers by the emperor and the empress dowager 
of China, the distinguished guests cut York ham with Sheffield 
knives and drank French wines out of German glasses. The new 
Chinese Presbyterian church at Wei-hsien typifies the elements 
that are entering Asia, for it contains Chinese brick, Oregon fir 
beams, German steel binding-plates and rods, British cement, 
Belgian glass, and Manchurian pine pews. The Siamese woman 
busily treads an American sewing machine, and her husband 
proudly rides a bicycle made in Connecticut. In many parts of 
Asia, people who but a decade or two ago were satisfied with the 
crudest appliances of primitive life are now learning the utility 
of foreign wire, nails, cutlery, paints, and chemicals, to use steam 
and electrical machinery, and to like Oregon flour, Chicago beef, 
Pittsburg pickles and London jam. 

These things not only lessen the hardships of missionary life, 
but they mean that our constituency has a knowledge of the non- 
Christian world that formerly it did not have. Men in our 
churches are no longer so ignorant of other peoples. Books and 
magazine articles have dissipated the mystery of the Orient. 
Electricity enables the newspapers to tell every morning what 
occurred yesterday in Seoul and Peking, in Rangoon and Nagasaki. 
Our treatment of the Chinese and the Negro testify to the fact 
that race prejudice is still strong. Nevertheless, the white man 
does not look down upon the man of other races to the same extent 
that he did a century ago. He recognizes more clearly the good 
qualities that some of the non-Christian peoples possess. No 



THE FUTURE OF MISSIONARY WORK. 113 

man today despises the Japanese^ — at any rate, not in Russia. 
And we hear more of the industry of the Chinese and the intellect 
of the Hindu. The transition from the first century of Protestant 
missions to the second century is attended by no more significant 
change than this, that the non-Christian peoples are regarded 
with more respect. Our methods must adapt themselves to the 
fact that the American missionary does not go out as a superior 
to an inferior, but as a man, with a message to his brother-man; 
knowing that back of almond eyes and under a black skin is a 
soul for whom Christ died, and feeling that each child of earth is 

" Heir of the same inheritance, 
Child of the self-same God, 
He hath but stumbled in the path 
We have in weakness trod." 

A more embarrassing fact is that we not only know Asia better, 
but that Asia knows us better. The printing-press runs day and 
night in India. Daily papers are published in all the leading 
cities of Japan. Siam and China have a vernacular press. The 
same steamer that brings to non-Christian nations Western goods 
brings also Western books and periodicals. The brutal, immoral 
trader arrives on the same ship with the missionary. Bibles and 
whiskey speed across the Pacific in the same cargo. Chinese 
gentlemen visit America and are treated with shameful indignity. 
The Asiatic travels through Europe and America and goes back 
to tell his countrymen of our intemperance, our lust of gold, our 
municipal corruption. '' The Letters of a Chinese Official " were 
not written by a Chinese, but unquestionably they represent the 
bitter and cynical contempt of the mandarin for the Western world 
that he has come to know, and he probably will not see the 
superbly effective reply of William Jennings Bryan. 

And the Asiatic discovers not only our vices, but our sectarian 
differences, and, worse still, our irreligion. He knows that multi- 
tudes in the lands from which the missionaries come repudiate 
Christianity and sneer at the effort to preach it to other peoples, 
and that while the missionaries exhort Asiatics to keep the 
Sabbath, Americans at home do not keep it themselves. Brah- 
mans and mandarins read infidel books and magazine articles and 
confront the missionary with the hostile arguments of his own 
countrymen. 

And so we must prosecute our work amid changed conditions, 



114 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

people at home no longer under illusions as to what the heathen 
are and the heathen no longer under illusions as to what we are. 
The romance of missions in the popular mind has been dispelled; 
and the missionary is not now a hero to the average Christian. 
The old is passing away and a new created world springs up, but 
a world that is not Christian. We no longer confront a cringing 
heathenism, but an aroused and militant Asia which has awakened 
to a new consciousness of unity and power. Asia for the 
Asiatic is now the slogan, and we must reckon with it. The 
Japanese victory over Russia -has enormously increased this 
spirit, so that today not only Japan, but China and India and 
Turkey are aflame with the spirit of resistance to the white man's 
domination. When the Asiatic of our day is oppressed, the world 
with fear hears him fiercely mutter the words of Shakespeare's 
Jew: '' Hath not a heathen eyes? Hath not a heathen hands, 
organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same 
food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, 
healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter 
and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? 
If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not 
die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? " Thus, while 
some difficulties, such as physical hardships and isolation, have 
diminished, new obstacles of a formidable character have emerged. 

In such circumstances what are some of the reasonable infer- 
ences as to the future of missionary work? 

First of all, we must recognize the fact that this is not a crusade 
whose object is to be attained by a magnificent spurt. Error and 
superstition are so interwoven with the whole social and political 
fabric of the non-Christian world that Christianity seems to it to 
be subversive of all its institutions. For a long time other faiths 
were indifferent to the gospel, but as their priests see more and 
more clearly what changes Christianity involves, indifference is 
giving place to alarm. The ethnic religions are, therefore, setting 
themselves in battle array. It would be foolish to ignore their 
power, foolish to imagine that we are seeing the last of Buddhism 
in Japan and Siam, of Confucianism in China, of Brahmanism in 
India, and of Mohammedanism in Turkey. Heathenism will die 
hard. In the words of Dr. Clarke: 

" The missionary enterprise endeavors to plant the Christian faith as the 
faith and life-principle of the human race. Even the words that tell of such 
a work are almost overwhelming; how much more the vision of the task 



THE FUTURE OF MISSIONARY WORK. 115 

itself! The enterprise demands long time; and if much is to be done there 
must be adequate comprehension of the nature of the undertaking, and great 
variety in methods of work, and ready adaptation to conditions as they arise, 
and inexhaustible patience. Since we, the Christian people, are committed 
to such an enterprise as this, it is only the demand of common-sense that we 
settle down deliberately to- the work, intelligently expecting a long pull, and 
planning to give it our best strength for an indefinite time to come. Mission- 
aries on the field should take this view of their work, and the Church at home 
should frankly and patiently accept it with all that it implies." 

The world, the flesh, and the devil are in Asia as well as in 
America, and fighting harder. It is no hoHday task to which we 
have set ourselves. It is a big undertaking, a hard one, a long 
one. Against us are '^ the principalities, the powers, the world 
rulers of this darkness.'^ Need have we of patience, of " the 
strength of his might, and the whole armour of God." We must 
sternly face our task in the spirit of the man of whom Browning 
said: He 

"... never turned his back but marched breast forward, 

Never doubted clouds would break, 
Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph. 
Held we fall to rise, are bafiled to fight better, 

Sleep to wake." 

For this stupendous task the Church at home must adopt some 
new methods. This enterprise cannot be maintained simply by 
passing the hat to those who happen to be present on a given 
Sunday once a year. We must insist on personal subscriptions, 
proportionately made and systematically paid. The rich should 
be urged to give their share, which they are not now doing. We 
must do less begging and pleading, as if missions were a charity 
and a side issue, and boldly declare that it is the supreme duty of 
the Church of God. It is time for Christendom to understand 
that its chief work in the twentieth century is to plan this move- 
ment on a scale gigantic in comparison with anything it has yet 
done, and to grapple intelligently, generously, and resolutely with 
the majestic work of making Jesus Christ adequately known to 
the whole world. 

But let us not be misled by the idea that men are going to be 
converted wholesale or by any patent devices. An eminent and 
sincere worker in China says that present missionary methods 
remind him of the old-time sexton who went about a church and 
lighted each lamp separately, and that we ought to adopt the 
method of the modern sexton who simply goes behind the pulpit 



116 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

and touches a button. ^' Convert a dozen of China's leaders/' 
he cries, '^ and you will convert China." I do not believe in that 
kind of conversion. Some changes in method are indeed required, 
but not those that involve the abandonment of Christ's method 
of dealing with men. 

But the changes that are needed, let us not hesitate to make, 
no matter what they cost. Nor should we be ashamed to confess 
that we have made some mistakes, and that we are ready to read- 
just our methods from time to time as God in his providence may 
direct. Because we did a thing last year is not a conclusive reason 
why we should do it next year. Did not Emerson say that con- 
sistency is the virtue of small minds ? Let us do what we believe 
to be right before God today, whether or not it is what we did 
yesterday. The man who cannot change his mind when condi- 
tions have changed is not fit to be an administrator of a great 
enterprise. He is worse than a weak man, for the latter is ame- 
nable to advice, while the former is as stubbornly inaccessible to 
reason as a mule. Grant that some of our cherished plans do 
fail; it does not necessarily mean that God fails. More than 
once we have made this mistake. God is not tied up to our 
schemes. They may be defective, so that their miscarriage is 
really to the advantage of the work. Our only safety is to keep 
close to God. Moving with him, we shall make no mistakes. 
If the staggering reverse, the inexplicable providence occurs, let 
us not lose heart, but remember Christ's reply to Peter's anxious 
question: '' What is that to thee? Follow thou me." 

In the second place, we must recognize the part that the growing 
native church ought to have, especially, in the work of direct 
evangelization. In the past the typical missionary has been 
primarily an evangelist to the heathen. He had to be, for his was 
often the only voice from whom the message could be heard, and 
his work was necessarily individualistic. He has, therefore, been 
paramount. The mission and the Board have been expected to 
run everything. If anything was wanted, the Board was asked 
to do it. But as the result of wise and faithful labor a native 
church has now been created, and from this time on we must 
concede its proper share of responsibility for making the gospel 
known, and more and more definitely our missionary policy should 
emphasize the training of a native ministry for this purpose. 
Many things need to be done in non-Christian lands that it is not 
the function of the boards to do. Our business is to plant Chris- 



THE FUTURE OF MISSIONARY WORK. 117 

tianity and help to get it started, and then educate it to take care 
of itself. It is true that in some lands the native church is yet 
in its infancy and must have aid and counsel. But more and more 
clearly we must recognize the principle. These popular appeals 
to send out thousands of missionaries in order that the heathen 
may hear the gospel ignore the part that the native church has 
in the preaching of the gospel. Since the world began, no people 
has ever been converted by foreigners. If all China is to hear 
the gospel, it must hear it chiefly from Chinese. I do not, of 
course, mean that our missionary work should cease to be evan- 
gelistic or that reenforcements are not needed. But I do mean 
that our policy should emphasize more largely the educational 
work which will produce a native ministry, and emphasize more 
largely too the duty of each native Christian to make Christ 
known to his countrymen, without expectation of pay from the 
foreigner. 

Third, our work in the future should be less sectarian and more 
broadly Christian. I do not mean by this that our denomina- 
tions are not Christian or that their work has been narrowly 
sectarian. In this respect the missionaries are already in advance 
of many in the home churches. But more and more we should 
unite in presenting to the heathen world, not so much the tenets 
on which we differ, as the truths on which we agree. I admire the 
ingenuity of those who can find good reasons for preaching denomi- 
national peculiarities to the heathen, but when I hear the labored 
arguments for such a policy, I S3'mpathize with the child who, 
after a sermon in which the minister had eloquently urged that 
the unity for which the Lord prayed was consistent with sectari- 
anism, said: '' Mamma, if Christ didn't mean what he said, why 
didn't he say what he meant? " In India I met a swarthy native 
who knew just enough English to be able to tell me that he was a 
Scotch Presbyterian. Thank God, there is now a Union Presby- 
terian church in India, and also in Japan and Mexico and Korea, 
while a majestic one is forming in China. Why should not Presby- 
terians and other evangelical churches unite on the foreign field? 
Why force our differences upon the Christians of Asia? We would 
not be premature or impracticable. The deeply rooted differences 
of centuries are not to be eradicated in a day. We must feel our 
way along with caution and wisdom. The work abroad is in 
many respects a projection of the work at home, and it will be 
more or less hampered by our American divisions. But in the 



118 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

presence of a vast heathen population, let us at least remember 
that our points of disagreement are less vital than our points of 
agreement. It is no part of our duty to perpetuate on the foreign 
field the sectarian divisions of Europe and America. One funda- 
mental principle of our future missionary policy should be that 
expressed in the ringing proclamation of the Conference of Protes- 
tant Missions in Japan: '^ That all those who are one with Christ 
by faith are one body, and that all who love the Lord Jesus and 
his Church in sincerity and truth should pray and labor for the 
full realization of such a corporate oneness as the Master himself 
prayed for in the night in which he was betrayed.'^ 

It is a corollary of what has been said that we should avoid as 
far as possible identifying Christianity with questions on which 
Christians disagree. Such teaching is suicidal, for sooner or later 
the Asiatic finds out that a large number of Christians, including 
some missionaries, believe differently, and then there is danger that 
either his faith or his confidence in the missionary will be weak- 
ened. We must, indeed, frankly admit that there are questions 
on which we differ. We may even tell the native Christian what 
those things are and why we believe that we are right. But let 
us be manly enough and Christian enough to tell him at the same 
time, that there are questions on which equally devout Christians 
themselves are not agreed, so that when he learns these differences 
for himself his faith will not be disturbed. 

And in the matter of the creed and government of the native 
church, we must more clearly recognize the right of each autono- 
mous body of Christians to determine certain things for itself. 
Here is one of the anxious problems of the future. Will the 
rising church of Japan, of China, be a soundly evangelical church? 
God grant that it may be. And yet in the course of nearly two 
thousand years, Christianity has undoubtedly taken on some of 
the characteristics of the white races, and missionaries, inheriting 
these characteristics, have more or less unconsciously identified 
them with the essentials. Perhaps this is one reason that Chris- 
tianity is so often called by the Chinese " the foreigner's reli- 
gion," a saying that indicates an entire misconception of its real 
character. How far is it proper for us to impose upon them our 
Western terminology and ecclesiastical forms? How far are we 
to be the judge of what it is necessary for other churches to 
accept? It is difficult for us to realize to what an extent our modes 
of theological thought and our forms of church polity have been 



THE FUTURE OF MISSIONARY WORK. 119 

influenced by our Western environment and the polemical strug- 
gles through which we have passed. The Oriental, not having 
passed through those particular controversies, knowing little and 
caring less about them, and having other controversies of his own, 
may not find our forms and methods exactly suited to his needs. 
Let us give to him the same freedom that we demand for our- 
selves, and refrain from imposing on other peoples those features 
of Christianity that are purely racial. We say that our aim is the 
establishment of a self-governing, self-supporting, and self-propa- 
gating church. Let us not shrink from the realization of our 
avowed aim. Let the Asiatics accept Christ for themselves and 
develop for themselves the methods and institutions that result 
from his teaching. Let us have faith in our brethren and faith in 
God. When Christ said that he would be with his disciples alway, 
he meant his disciples in Asia and Africa as well as in Europe and 
America. The operations of the Holy Spirit are not confined to 
the white man. We should plant in non-Christian lands the 
fundamental principles of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and then 
give the native church reasonable freedom to make some adapta- 
tions for itself. If in the exercise of that freedom it does some 
things that we deprecate, let us not be frightened and think that 
our work has been in vain. The Bible was written by Asiatics 
and in an Asiatic language. Christ himself was an Asiatic. We 
of the West have, perhaps, only imperfectly understood that 
Asiatic Bible and Asiatic Christ, and it may be that by the guid- 
ance of God's Spirit upon the rising churches of Asia, a new and 
broader and more perfect interpretation of the gospel of Christ 
may be made known to the world. 

" Our little systems have their day; 

They have their day and cease to be: 
They are but broken lights of thee, 
And thou, O Lord, art more than they." 

But no changes that have been made and none that will be 
made impair in the slightest degree the imperative character of 
the missionary obligation. Rather do they strengthen it. There 
may, indeed, be a change of emphasis in the motives that prompt 
men to engage in missionary work. Some of the motives that 
stirred our fathers are not as strongly operative today. But 
other motives have emerged that were then but dimly under- 
stood. But the great central facts still stand, that the knowl- 



120 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

edge of Jesus Christ means the temporal and eternal salvation 
of men; that it is the duty of those who have that knowledge to 
make it known to those that do not have it; that no matter how 
distant the ignorant may be, no matter how widely they may 
differ from us, no matter whether they are conscious of their need, 
or how much trouble and expense we may incur in reaching them, 
we must get to them, if we are loyal to our own consciences and 
to our crucified and risen Lord. Above all the tumult of theolog- 
ical strife, the one object that is towering more and more clearly 
and commandingly before men is the figure of Jesus Christ, the 
divine and eternal Son of the ever-living God. In him is the true 
unity, of the race, and around him cluster its noblest activities. 
However much Christians may differ as to other things, they will 
be more and more agreed as to the imperative duty and the inspir- 
ing privilege of preaching to the world that gospel which, unaged 
by time and unweakened by attack, stands before us in fadeless 
beauty and imperishable vitality — the only hope for a needy 
race. 

We rejoice in the advance of civilization, but no mere civili- 
zation can ever save a world. There is no moral quality in a 
steamboat or a ballot box. A merely material civilization is 
always and everywhere a curse rather than a blessing. From 
the Garden of Eden down, the fall of man has resulted from what 
George Adam Smith calls ^^ the increase of knowledge and of 
power unaccompanied by reverence. . . . No evolution is stable 
which neglects the moral factor or seeks to shake itself free from 
the eternal duties of obedience and of faith. . . . The song of 
Lamech echoes from a remote antiquity the savage truth that 
the first results of civilization are to equip hatred and render 
revenge more deadly ... a savage exultation in the fresh power 
of vengeance which all the novel instruments have placed in their 
inventor's hands." 

Legislation cannot add the desired quality. Laws deal only 
with external acts and relations; they do not make bad men good. 
In the language of Herbert Spencer, ^' There is no political alchemy 
by which you can get golden conduct out of leaden motives." 
As for secular education, Macaulay truly says that nine tenths of 
the evils that afflict the human race come from a union of high 
intelligence and low desires. Greek and Roman culture were at 
their highest point of development when the ancient world was 
literally rotten with vice. The student of the Renaissance knows 



THE FUTURE OF MISSIONARY "WORK. 121 

that Italy was never worse morally than in the period famous for 
its revival of classic learning. " Under the thin mask of humane 
refinement/' says the historian Symonds, " leered the untamed 
savage; and an age that boasted not unreasonably of its mental 
progress was, at the same time, notorious for the vices that dis- 
grace mankind." 

Some allege that civilization should precede Christianity, but 
Dr. James Stewart says: ^^ Trade and commerce have been on 
the west coast of Africa for more than three centuries. What 
have they made of that region? Some of its tribes are more 
hopeless, more sunken morally and socially, and rapidly becoming 
more commercially valueless, than any tribes that may be found 
throughout the whole of the continent. Mere commercial influ- 
ence, by its example or its teaching during all that time, has had 
little effect on the cruelty and reckless shedding of blood and the 
human sacrifices of the besotted paganism which still exists near 
that coast." It is the gospel that men need, the gospel that can 
enter the heart of unregenerate man, throttle its passions, and 
make him a new creature. 

There are other questions of which I would like to speak. As 
we stand on this historic spot, 

" I feel my view of time grow wondrous wide; 
I see the world of old, and overawed, 
I note the magic of the swelling tide, 

Instinct with power, transcending human laud." 

But, without attempting further details, may we not, as we face 
the future, see the main outlines of a glorious vision; not the 
baseless dream of the enthusiast, but the reasonable expectation 
of those who believe that the divine hand guides the destinies 
of men, and that underneath all the commotions of earth, the 
currents of time are sweeping toward that 

" One far-off divine event. 
To which the whole creation moves." 

And this vision is that the movement for the evangelization of the 
world will continue to grow, and assume more and more majestic 
proportions until all men shall know the Lord. 

Is it not true, missionaries and secretaries, that reports justify 
this vision? Is not every mail burdened with them? As I read 
the letters that pour into my office, I sometimes feel, like Ahimaaz 
of old, that I must now run and bear tidings of victor3\ The 



122 TPIE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL, 

number of converts is increasing by leaps and bounds. But apart 
from this, there are unmistakable signs that a great movement 
has begun. The very fact that heathen systems are passing from 
indifference to hostility, and feel obliged to conceal their coarser 
practices and to emphasize their better features, is a tribute to 
the growing power of Christianity. Society in Asia is becoming 
more ashamed of open vice. Standards of conduct are growing 
purer. The character of Christ is universally conceded to be the 
loftiest in history. What Benjamin Kidd calls the altruistic 
ideas of Christianity have been liberated in heathen nations and 
they are slowly but surely transforming them. As you travel 
through those vast continents, you become conscious of the work- 
ing of mighty forces that are creating conditions more favorable 
to the rapid triumph of the gospel. You are impressed not so 
much by the actual number of those already converted, as by the 
strength of the current that is sweeping majestically toward the 
goals of God. You feel with Gibson that the situation is satis- 
factory, not that we are contented with ourselves or with our 
work, but that " a crucial experiment has been made. We know 
what can be done and can predict results." We see that we are 
in the trend of the divine purpose and that " His day is marching 
on." The skeptic may sneer and the critic object, but we reply 
in the ringing words of Gladstone on the Reform Bill: " Time is 
on our side. The great social forces which move onward in their 
might and majesty, and which the tumults of these strifes do not 
for a moment impede or disturb, those forces are marshaled in 
our support. And the banner which we now carry in the fight, 
though perhaps at some moment of the struggle it may droop over 
our sinking hearts, yet will float again in the eye of heaven and will 
be borne, perhaps not to an easy, but to a certain and to a not 
distant victory." Is there not divine authority for this vision? 
Did not Paul declare that it is the purpose of God to sum up all 
things in Christ and that every knee shall bow and every tongue 
confess that Jesus Christ is Lord? 

In a famous art gallery there is a painting called " Anno 
Domini." It represents an Egyptian temple, from whose spacious 
courts a brilliant procession of soldiers, statesmen, philosophers, 
artists, musicians, and priests is advancing in triumphal march, 
bearing a huge idol, the challenge and the boast of heathenism. 
Across the pathway of the procession is an ass, whose bridle is held 
by a reverent looking man and upon whose back is a fair young 



THE FUTURE OF ^HSSIONARY WORK. 123 

mother with her infant child. It is Jesus, just entering Egypt in 
flight from the wrath of Herod, and there crossing the path of 
aggressive heathenism. Then the clock strikes and the era of our 
Lord begins. It is a noble parable. Its fulfillment has been long 
delayed till the Child has become a Man, crucified, risen, crowned. 
But now, in full majesty and power. He stands across the pathway 
of advancing heathenism. There may be confusion and tumult 
for a time. The heathen may rage '' and the rulers take counsel 
together against the Lord." But the idol shall be broken " with 
a rod of iron,'^ and the King upon his holy hill shall have " the 
heathen for ' his ' inheritance and the uttermost parts of the 
earth for * his ' possession.'' 

And, therefore, as we stand today under the open sky on this 
spot sacred to the memories of the mighty dead, we reverently 
say, in the immortal words of Lincoln at Gettysburg: '* We 
sh^ld be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us: 
that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that 
cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that 
we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain." 



124 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 



BRIEF ADDRESSES BY NATIVE CHRISTIANS FROM THE 
FOREIGN MISSION FIELDS. 

Greetings from Arnold Sidobe Hiwale, of India. 

To be present at this centennial meeting of the American Board 
I esteem one of the greatest privileges of my life. Not only to 
the men who began this grand movement do I feel grateful, but 
also the place from which it started is very dear to my heart. 
Indeed, this movement made me what I am today. You who 
are the sons and daughters of a free land, and who inherit the 
riches of Christ, can hardly understand the significance of a 
gathering like this, but we who owe our all to this Board, 
honor and esteem it beyond our power of expression, and that 
is why I say that what Jerusalem was to the Crusaders, what 
Benares is to the Hindus, and what Mecca is to the Moham- 
medans, the Haystack is to the converts of this Board all over 
the world. 

It was to India that this Board sent two of its first missionaries. 
After landing there they found opposition and many difficulties, 
but, brave and determined, they never faltered in their God-given 
duty. They faced all difficulties and trial and, in the time of 
opposition, they planned out their intended work. 

One of them lived in the city, while the other went traveling 
from town to town and from village to village, under that hot 
Indian sun, thus visiting crowds of the natives who never had 
heard what the gospel was. He went to the holy place we call 
Nasik Shkatra, which is on the bank of the holy river, the Krishna, 
and while working among the pilgrims who had gathered there 
from all parts of India to get rid of their sins, he fell asleep in the 
Lord Jesus Christ, and was buried there, far away from his country 
and from his dear friends and relatives. 

Brethren! when the very foundation of our Indian churches is 
cemented by the blood of your own brave and consecrated country- 
men, do believe the hour of final victory is certain. Soul after 
soul is being added to the list of his children. 

And as you see me here speaking about India, and that, too, in 
your language, let me beg you to remember that I am only one of 
the multitude of converts in India, the fruits of the work of your 



ADDRESSES BY NATIVE CHRISTIANS. 125 

missionaries whom you sent to convert us and make us the fol- 
lowers of the same God whom you worship and honor. 
. When I am asked to speak a word concerning India, what can 
I say but a word of thanks for the great work you have done there? 
You can hardly imagine how grateful we who are led to Christ in 
our heathen countries are to this Board for its many kindnesses, 
and more than that, for sending us the gospel that we might 
inherit eternal salvation through our common Lord and Redeemer. 

Because of your success in obtaining freedom and liberty, the 
French people congratulated you by presenting you the Statue of 
Liberty, which stands today in New York Harbor. Christian 
India, and especially Congregational Christian India, has no gold 
and silver by which to show you her gratitude, but she is building 
up a strong tower of mighty prayers, unseen, yet not unheard, 
before the throne of the Almighty for your prosperity. 

Your reports tell of the many and great works already begun 
in India, but what are these when the whole land is considered? 
India has three hundred million people; that is to say, one fifth of 
the world's population. The great work already done is but a 
beginning. Thousands of people are perishing without the gospel. 
If you could quadruple your Christian army in the immediate 
future, the people of India would soon turn to Christianity, not 
by hundreds or thousands, but by hundreds of thousands. I 
fear that five or ten years hence will be too late. 

Is it not right at such a critical time as this for us to stretch out 
our feeble hands for the help from you who are strong and mighty 
in Christendom, and ask you to increase your noble work? At 
present, India is passing through a very strange experience. In 
spite of the work of all the Christian societies, India practically 
is a heathen country, and yet she is trying to learn all the Western 
ways of life. Her young men are going to the different parts of 
Europe and America to get the benefit of their commercial and 
industrial enterprises. This they are doing, but quite apart from 
the Christian religion. If the East is allowed to become civilized 
without Christianity, the Church of God will face some of the 
difficulties which it did in the first few centuries. The East is 
waking up. It is on fire on account of the Russo-Japanese War. 
Do not encourage India, China, and Japan, which make half of 
the world with their tremendous populations, to fight for their 
rights while they remain in their heathenism. Let them not think 
that prosperity and fame can be obtained without learning and 



126 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

practicing the eternal truth which has been taught by our Saviour. 
'' Love thy neighbor as thyself." 

While I am thus pleading for India, and reminding you of the great 
need of evangelization in that land at this very moment, I ask you 
to remember also that our churches, small and poor as they are, 
are nevertheless trying to do their duty for their own land and 
countrymen. We try to give heed to your teaching about giving. 
The salvation of India depends on her own sons and daughters. 
We need your help to become efficient in saving our land. 

In the providence of our loving Father, we fortunately have 
a just and generous government. During recent years, famines 
and plagues have made their home in India. If it were not for 
the kind government and your generous help, rendered to us in the 
years of calamity, thousands of our people would have perished 
without food and shelter. So, Christian friends and benefactors, 
in the midst of a thousand and one difficulties, we have shown 
courage and the spirit of endurance. 

We beg you to listen to the pleas that come to you. Increase 
the reinforcements. Think of our three hundred million people. 
Study the situation of our millions upon millions of children. 
Rejoice with the women of India, who have been buried for the 
past three thousand years in slavery and degradation, and who 
now find relief and shelter at your door. 

Christian friends and members of the American Board, I again 
express my thanks to you for lifting us out of the dense darkness 
of heathenism into the clear light of Christianity; for showing us 
the true and loving Father through his son, Jesus Christ; for 
making into men and women us who were buried for centuries 
together in superstition, ignorance, and idolatry; for saving our 
thousands of orphan children from the very jaws of death, and 
giving them their daily bread; for clothing our widows and old 
people; yea, for relieving the sorrows and pains, both physical 
and spiritual, of thousands; for giving food and shelter to them 
that were driven from their houses for the sake of the gospel; 
for building schoolhouses and dormitories for mental and spirit- 
ual instruction; for encouraging our young men and women to 
form Christian communities and also for uplifting them so that 
they may be able to ffil the responsible places of leadership. 
But more than all I thank you for creating in the depths of our 
Hindu hearts a conscience, and for building the Church of God 
in our land of Hindustan. 



ADDEESSES BY NATIVE CHRISTIANS. 127 

May the Heavenly Father pour his richest blessing upon you 
and upon your children, and may he also prosper you and your 
free country in hastening the coming of the kingdom of God. 

Greeting from Henry M. Hoisington Kulasinghe, of Ceylon. 

'^ There is a time for everything/' says the preacher; '^ a time 
to sow and a time to reap; a time to weep, and a time to rejoice; 
a time to speak, and a time to be silent." In the multitude of 
the thoughts that rise within me as I stand before you, as the 
representative of the work of the Board in Ceylon, I would rather 
remain silent, and let my presence alone convey to you the 
message that burns within my heart for expression. 

Bishop Heber depicts Ceylon in words familiar to most of you : 

" What though the spicy breezes 

Blow soft o'er Ceylon's isle, 
Though every prospect pleases 

And only man is vile; 
In vain with lavish kindness 

The gifts of God are strewn, 
The heathen in his blindness 

Bows down to wood and stone," 

— a curious blend of beauty and pathos. But it gives you only 
a partial aspect of that island and its people, and it was written 
several years ago. Had Bishop Heber been to Jaffna, in the 
northern part of the island, and seen what a contrast it presented 
in many respects to the scene in central Ceylon, which inspired 
his muse, he might have given us a very different picture. But 
times have changed, and even in sloAv-moving Orient, '^ Progress 
is the law of life." 

I come to you as the representative of young and growing 
Ceylon as we find it today, after more than a century of British 
occupation and an equally long period of Christian missionary 
enterprise. I have three generations of Christian blood in me, 
and it is, by no means, unique. What you see in me, you find 
reproduced in many other lives in Jaffna. Ninety years ago 
Jaffna was very little known to the West, and its people knew 
nothing of Christ and his message of love to the world. They 
were hardly aware at all of the existence of a world outside their 
own narrow bounds. If you visit Jaffna today you will not 
believe your own eyes. Such a complete transformation in every 



128 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

respect from the island to which the pioneer missionaries were 
sent! 

You ask me what has done this? Is it due to the British 
occupation? I say, Only in part. Has the character of the people 
anything to do with it? I say, Very little. But the reason is 
ultimately to be found in the moral supremacy of the gospel of 
Jesus Christ, and its power to save and to transform the lives of 
men and women. 

My countrymen understand the power of that gospel, and greatly 
appreciate the spirit of Christian America in sending missionaries 
to bear that gospel to our shores. Their coming and living 
amongst us; the noble testimony of their lives, which was perme- 
ated with that message; their spirit of sacrifice and heroism in 
leaving home and other kindred ties in obedience to that call; 
their constant devotion and loyalty to the cause of loving service 
and helpfulness to human need till death called them to a higher 
and nobler service, — these have been to us the very essence of 
that gospel message, the evidence of a new life and the dawn of 
a new era of progress. 

I have been sent to voice the gratitude of my countrymen for 
the gospel of peace which America sent to us through a noble 
band of consecrated men and women, whose memory is held in 
much love and esteem by the people of Jaffna whom they came 
to redeem for Christ. I recall with reverent memory the names 
of these honored men of God, Hoisington, Spaulding, Meigs, 
Richards, Poor, Green, Hastings, Smith, and Howland, and some 
saintly women amongst them, such as the Misses Agnew and 
Leitch, who gave their lives willingly for Jaffna and lived to see 
that their sacrifice was not paid in vain. 

Message of Akaiko Akana, of Hawaii. 

Akaiko Akana presented himself as one of the fruits of the 
work of the United States missionaries in Hawaii. He said that 
the seed. had been sown and there had been a great change as the 
result of the missionary work. He said that he had given up a 
more promising future so far as fame and finances are concerned 
to follow the missionary work, and he made an urgent appeal to 
the people in the United States interested in missions not to forget 
Hawaii. He wanted Christianity more general in the islands, 
saying there is plenty of room for righteousness. He deplored 



ADDRESSES BY NATIVE CHRISTIANS. 129 

the present custom of breaking the Sabbath by baseball and golf 
in his land, and said that he wanted it stopped and was working 
to that end, and he asked the members of the American Board and 
all others to make it a subject of prayer. 

Greeting from Fei Chi Hao, of China, a Student at Yale 

University. 

Friends of the American Board: It .is a great pleasure and honor 
to stand before you this afternoon on this great occasion as one 
of the many fruits of your missionary work in China. I can do 
no better in the few minutes allotted me than to tell you what 
the missionaries whom you commissioned have done for me and 
for my family, though there is nothing in ourselves to boast of, 
but I must bear testimony to the transforming power of Chris- 
tianity. 

Through my father's severe illness, some twenty-five 3'ears ago, 
he was converted to the Christian religion under the influence of 
the missionaries of the Congregational denomination, and my 
mother soon followed in his steps and became a faithful follower 
of Jesus Christ. They gave up idol worship, card playing, and 
many other worldly pleasures. They put my brother, my two 
sisters, and myself into Christian schools. My mother was not 
educated, and never had a chance to go to school; but at the age 
of forty-two, soon after her conversion, the missionaries began to 
teach her to read, so that at her death there was not a single 
Chinese character in the New Testament that she did not know. 
Day after day for several years she used to sit in the women's 
dispensary in my native cit}^ of T'ung Chou and tell the simple 
but beautiful story of Jesus to hundreds of women, until finally, 
in 1900, she gladly gave up her earthly life for the Master whom 
she had learned to love. Both of my parents are now wearing 
the martyr's crown in the '' Home above." This is a sample of 
what I call the result of your work. 

I am always glad and thankful that I Avas born in a Christian 
home, a rare privilege that very few Chinese have, and that I 
was educated in 3'our missionar}' schools for fifteen years. I 
knew the missionaries in T'ung Chou almost as early as I knew 
my parents, and I am proud to be called, not '^ friend," but the 
'' son " of the missionaries of the American Board. It is my high 
ambition now to follow in the footsteps of your missionaries and 



130 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

carry back the blessed message to my people in the near future. 
This also is what I call a result of your work. 

May I tell you some other sad but glorious results of your work 
during the Boxer uprising in 1900? It is a pitiful thing that a 
large number of your missionaries were massacred by the Boxers; 
but do you know, friends, that a much larger number of the native 
converts perished together with them? For instance, in my 
native city of T'ung Chou more than half of the four hundred 
native Christians were killed, more than two thirds in the city of 
Tai Ku, scores in Pao Ting Fu, Pekin, Kalgan, and many other 
places. Many of these native martyrs had chances to escape 
and thus to save their lives, but the power of Christianity and 
the love of your missionaries got hold of their hearts. They 
preferred to die with their missionary friends than to escape and 
live alone. This I call another result of your work. 

I am not ashamed that I am a Chinese. I sincerely believe the 
beautiful saying in our church, " The blood of the martyrs is the 
seed of the church." The blood of the many thousand native 
converts became the seed of the native church and made my 
country much richer than she was before. This also is the result 
of missionary work. Is it worth while, then, to continue your 
work there in the dark kingdom? 

China is in a most critical condition just now. She has aroused 
from her long slumber. She wants to change and reform. She 
wishes to adapt herself to Western civilization. But, alas! She 
only wants the fruits of Christianity, but not the root. We need 
colleges and universities. We need warships and good soldiers. 
We need to build railroads and open up mines. But the thing that 
we need most, just now, is Christianity. The Christian religion is 
the only hope and salvation of China. The work of our Board is 
at present in a flourishing condition. Pardon me if I use the 
slang expression and tell you that our work is simply " booming." 
New converts are increasing at a tremendous rate, and the present 
golden opportunity for doing missionary work will not last long. 
Are you willing to seize the advantage and make good use of this 
opportunity to reap the harvest that is ready and waiting for you? 

Let us not look at the sunny side of your work only. It is 
characteristic of the Christian religion that it is not welcomed at 
first, wherever it goes. Jesus himself was persecuted and crucified, 
and many of his disciples were put to death likewise. And it has 
happened time and again in church history that the disciples of 



ADDRESSES BY NATIVE CHRISTIANS. 131 

Jesus Christ have had to give up their earthly lives for the truth 
and to die for the principle for which they stood. Why, then, 
do you wonder that some of your missionaries were unwelcome 
in China and that some of them were massacred? It is hard for 
the average Chinese to understand your religious motives. They 
cannot understand why you have spent a large amount of m^oney 
and energy and made great sacrifices to send out these mission- 
aries; but let me assure you that some day they will all under- 
stand and will find that the missionaries are the best friends they 
have in China. Continue your work and do your best; you will 
feel repaid at the end. There will be no regret for whatever 
energy, money, and prayer you may be able to put into this 
missionary enterprise. 

Before I sit down let me, in behalf of the happy and grateful 
native converts of the North China and South China missions, 
and of the Fu Chow and Shansi missions, express to you our 
hearty thanks for what you have done for us in the past, and for 
what you are doing for us now, and let me take the liberty to 
thank you in advance for what you will continue to do for us in 
the future. 

On behalf of my brothers who are still in the darkness, let me 
earnestly beseech you, my dear friends, " Come over and help 
us." We do need you. 

Greeting from H. H. K'ung, of China, a Graduate of Oberlin 

College, and now a Graduate Student at Yale 

University. 

Mr. President and Ladies and Gentlemen of the Conference: I 
come to you as a native Christian of China, and a member of the 
Shansi Mission, to which many of your devoted missionaries 
belonged, — men and women of noblest character and Christlike 
spirit, who counted not their lives dear unto themselves, but 
rather died for Christ and their converts. I, as one of the products 
of the American Board's Shansi Mission, take great pleasure in 
bringing an expression of deepest gratitude and of hearty congratu- 
lation from the Christians of China to the churches of this blessed 
land upon this memorable celebration of the mother Board of 
Missions at this historic place. 

Through the love of God we are brought face to face here from 
the ends of the earth, not as strangers, but rather as a brother meets 



132 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

another brother whose welfare concerns him. I suppose that it 
was with such a brotherly feeling and spirit that the five young 
Williams College students were led to consecrate their lives to 
God, and to people who were unknown to them. 

We, the native Christians of China, feel grateful to you, not 
merely because you have sent your missionaries to bring Western 
learning to our youth, and your healing art to cure our sick ones, 
but also because you have shown us, through your representatives, 
how to live a rational and God-fearing life. Again, we are grateful 
to you, not only because your missionaries have done what they 
could for a few individuals, but more especially for the interest 
that they have taken in the welfare of our whole nation. Indeed, 
we have found them to be patient, earnest, faithful, and cheerful, 
ready either for a welcome or for rejection. We are glad to bear 
testimony that your missionaries have proved themselves worthy 
of the title, ^' Fishers of men." For all of this the Christians of 
China wish to express their appreciation, as did her keen but non- 
Christian statesman, the famous viceroy, Tuan Fang, who said 
at a banquet in New York City, '' For all of these services your 
missionaries have rendered us, you will not find China ungrateful.'^ 

We congratulate you upon the successful work that your Board 
has done in the last century, and we are glad to hear that the 
members of the Congregational churches have responded to the 
call of the Board's need and that the million dollars have been 
raised. Yet, above all, we are happy to observe the wisdom of 
the Board in selecting- as officers and missionaries those who haA^e 
proved adequate for the hard tasks of the great missionary 
movement. 

As for the urgent need of China at this critical time, compared 
with which there is no equal in her long history of four thousand 
years, I cannot help wishing that I might have the power to 
impress upon every one of you at this historical gathering the 
fact that the '' Giant of the Far East " is waking from his sleep, 
and in the very near future dear old Cathay, the long-lived 
nation, will take her seat among the first-class powers of the world. 
Then the Christian people of this country will have cause to be 
proud that America has had a share in the great regeneration of 
China. 

" We can do it if we will." Let us take that motto of the 
founders of this great mission board and make it the prayer of 
our church, and answer the Lord, '^ Yes, we can do it, and, God 



ADDRESSES BY NATIVE CHRISTIANS. 133 

helping us, we'' will do it.'^ Will you do it? Will you help to 
make the great old empire a Christian tower? This is your golden 
opportunity ! 

" Hark! the voice of Jesus calling, 
' Who will go and work today? 
Fields are white and harvest waiting; 
Who will bear the sheaves away? ' 
Long and loud the Master calleth, 

Rich reward he offers thee; 
Who will answer, gladly saying, 
' Here am I, O Lord, send me.' " 

Greeting from Rev. Oscar M. Chamberlain, of Turkey. 

I HAVE the pleasure to greet you and tell you of what the foreign 
missions have meant to Turkey. Time will not allow me to enter 
upon the details of this subject. I shall only endeavor to give you 
an idea of what the American Board has done for Turkey, as a 
result of my personal experience and observation. No statement 
of Turkey is complete without the account of the development 
of the missionary enterprises. The missionary efforts have been 
successful mainly among the Armenians. 

At first the work of the missionaries was rather evangelistic, 
there was comparatively little of systematic education. With 
the gradual rise of communities it became absolutely necessary 
that attention should be given to the principles underlying the 
conduct of communities in far more flourishing lands. Some of 
the missionaries felt that thay were simply heralds of the gospel, 
and could not see the absolute necessity of secular education, while 
others realized its importance to the development of national life. 
Moreover, the demand for this increased steadily. Young men 
of insatiate desire for development sought higher learning; they 
saw before them opening a sphere of research. If the missionaries 
failed in supplying them with it, they would, perhaps, resort to 
what, then.^ were infidel schools in Europe. They realized that 
evangelism and education must go hand in hand, and such recogni- 
tion of the importance of secular education gave birth to many 
primary, intermediate, and high schools, and colleges of learning, 
and aside from these there have been established orphanages, 
hospitals, and a variety of institutions, which owe their inception 
to the supreme influence of missions. 

The question is often asked. What are the relations between 
the missionaries and the Turkish government? There is no doubt 



134 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

that the Turkish government views them as enemies of the present 
Turkish rule, but this is in no sense true. The American mission- 
aries have assumed the position that the Turkish government is 
the government of the country, and its laws must be loyally ob- 
served, but if these laws are glaring violations of personal right 
and '^ common-sense '' they will do all they can to secure a correct- 
ive measure. Even in the attempts made to stir up revolu- 
tionary movements in some sections of the country, they have 
held themselves absolutely aloof from such movements. How 
ever, their instructions and preaching have inevitably created an 
intense love for liberty, religious and political as well; they have 
brought light into the empire, and light is always disturbing where 
there is corruption. 

Individually these missionaries represent the very highest grade 
of capacity and strong character. The record of their achieve- 
ments in literature, in research, and in education is not surpassed 
by that of any class of men and women in the world, and I chal- 
lenge the man who can prove the contrary. The words of Sir 
Philip Currie in connection with the late events in Turkey will 
stand as perpetual rebuttal to any false charges. He said: " The 
one bright spot in all the darkness that has covered Asiatic 
Turkey has been the heroism, the prudence, and the common- 
sense of the American missionaries." 

Now, in order to make it more personal, I will state to you my 
own experience of what the American missionaries have done for 
me. I was born from Christian parents, who belonged to the 
Armenian Gregorian church, but lived the lives of non-Christians. 
Only a lad then, I heard of the new ideas which the missionaries 
propagated, and became interested in learning more of these new 
ideas. The result was the birth of a strong desire in me to embrace 
the Protestant faith. I told my father that I had decided to join 
the Congregational church. He became intensely provoked, and 
compelled me to leave home immediately. He renounced me as 
his son. I left home with no penny in my pocket, hungry for a 
day, and no one knew it until one of my schoolmates found out 
that I was hungry and kindly offered me a penny with which to 
buy some bread. I explained to Rev. Albert Hubbard (mis- 
sionary then at Sivas, Turkey) all about my discouraging situa- 
tion. He was interested in me and was very much in sympathy 
with my situation. At last he said, " Be of good courage, I will 
stand by you." These words breathed into my soul a new cour- 



ADDRESSES BY NATIVE CHRISTIANS. 135 

age, and inspired my heart with a fresh ambition to suffer all 
things for the Master's sake. I am glad to say that my father 
admitted me into his home later on, seeing the value and the 
transforming power of the gospel. 

During all the years that I attended the American Normal 
School and Anatolia College the influence of those missionaries 
elevated my ideals and molded my Christian character. Their 
lives and personalities have impressed me very deeply, and espe- 
cially their intense earnestness in the message of the gospel is 
what has created in me a new ambition to live for God and bear 
witness for the crucified Lord. 

Honorable members of the American Board and dear friends, 
I stand before you as a representative of this people and witness 
to you for the work of the missionaries in Turkey, and desire, 
on their behalf, to express my appreciation of the work of the 
missionaries who left their native land in order to share in the 
sufferings of those people across the ocean, denying to themselves 
many privileges here just for the sake of comforting them with a 
living message. We thank you still more for the bountiful aid 
which you have rendered in order to make the light of the gospel 
shine once more on the eclipsed mountain tops of the land of 
Armenia, which accepted Christianity as a nation for the first 
time, and was once a center of Christian civilization. 

My earnest prayer is that God bless this nation to send out 
more men and women to preach to them who are crying, *' Come 
over into Armenia and help us.'' I most surely believe that the 
spirit that moved the hearts of those young men at the Haystack 
Meeting to lay the foundation of such an enterprise will also 
move many a heart here to a more energetic enterprise and more 
enthtisiastic service, for those who are intrusted to your care and 
efforts; for in so doing you will fulfill the sentiment of Mr. Glad- 
stone, who said, " To serve Armenia is to serve civilization," 
and in so doing especially you will fulfill the command of the 
Master, " Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations." 

Greeting from Stephen ka Ndunge Gumede, of South Africa, 

A Graduate of Wilberforce University, Ohio, and 

NOW A Student at the University of Michigan. 

I ESTEEM it a privilege and a high honor to be invited to say a 
few words on this great occasion in behalf of my fellow people 



136 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

beyond the sea. I am requested by your invitation to bring their 
greetings and to speak for them. As their representative, I bring to 
you, one and all, hearty greetings and congratulations; I bring their 
good wishes and an abundance of love for their mother church. 

When we Zulus think of the Haystack Prayer Meeting, the 
story of over seventy years ago, handed down to us by those who 
can bridge that mighty gap, comes vividly to our minds. It is 
the story of the brave missionary pioneers who made themselves 
exiles from home and cultured society, who faced the stormy seas 
with the true missionary courage. In your native land see them 
blazing their way through natural forests; see them crossing the 
arid plains; see them on their way to Umgungundhlovu, there to 
plead with the Zulu king to let the '^ sons of heaven " go from out 
the bondage of heathenism; finally, see them declaring to the 
king and his subjects the Great-Great whom they ignorantly did 
worship. 

In the lowly kraals and in the scattered mission stations the 
names of Lindley and Adams, Grout and Venable, Champion and 
Wilson, — yes, and the names of those heroes who followed them, 
who now lie buried on the field of their labor, on whose graves the 
Natal winds chant the perpetual requiem, — their names shall 
ever be household words. Although they are dead their memory 
is precious; it grows brighter with the years. Our love for them 
shall be 

" Deeper than the pillared skies, 
High as that peak in heaven where Milton kneels, 
Deep as that grave in hell where Caesar lies." 

Time would not permit me to talk of the consecrated men and 
women who are today carrying on the work started by the pio- 
neers, who are watching our every forward movement as a parent 
watches a child, who see to it that our growth is healthful. 

My fellow people would be ungrateful were they to ignore the 
sources from whence they derive these benefits and advantages. 
To you, ladies and gentlemen, who are faithfully directing and 
guarding our interests without any compensation and with no 
thought of reward — to you they would have me express their 
gratitude. The infinite love they have for you cannot be ex- 
pressed by a finite word; for, indeed, there are thoughts and ideas 
which the human speech, creation's divinest work though it may 
be, is too weak to voice. 



ADDKESSES BY NATIVE CHRISTIANS. 137 

During the past seventy-one years much has been accomplished, 
but the present and the future call for more efforts. Fired by 
the spirit of the twentieth century — the spirit of progress — the 
Amaxoza and the Zulus, leaders in educational movements, are 
on the threshold of a great educational awakening. They are 
embarked upon a revolution in thought and life. Their desire 
for education is so great that it has allured them from their fire- 
sides and has made them the globe-trotters. Their determination, 
their shibboleth, seems to be, " to catch up with the vanguard of 
civilization. " 

At times like these, when mighty movements are going on, they 
are in danger of setting up new gods ; of forgetting the high ideals 
of the past and following those paths which will lead them into 
the quicksands of dishonor and despair. 

It is of prime importance, therefore, that their friends stand out 
and hold the light to guide their footsteps. They must see to the 
laying of the foundation, that it is broad and firm. What better 
foundation can be laid than a broad and liberal education? 

They have outgrown that education which is bounded by the 
three Rs. The need, therefore, is not so much for founding new 
schools, but the most imperative need is to put to the standard 
of modern efficiency the schools at Amanzimtoti, Inanda, and 
Umzumbe. The centennial celebration must mark changes in the 
curricula of these schools. 

Hereafter they must be schools for higher education in the true 
sense of the word. They must give the native youths that edu- 
cation which will fit them for better living and better serving; 
that education which will supplant the tribal egoism with the 
altruism that will beget service for the whole. They must " rear 
up minds with the aspirations and faculties above the herd, 
capable of leading on their countr3'men to greater achievement in 
virtue, intelligence, and general well being." 

The Zulu Christian industrial school, founded by one of your 
sons, must teach them that all labor is honorable, and only idleness 
is a crime. Although through the " poll-tax fuss " the colony 
has been plunged into war, I still have great faith in the Natal 
government. In this noble work it will, as in the past, cooperate 
with you; it will increase its annual appropriation for native 
schools; it will second you in every effort. For a system of 
primary schools, culminating in schools for higher education, is 
the surest guarant}^ a colon}^ can have for peace, respect for 



138 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

authorities, reverence for the laws and the lofty ideals of citizen- 
ship. Where the masses are ignorant there is no peace. Igno- 
rance never did and never will help any government. When the 
Natal government shall look more after the education and the 
development of all his Majesty's subjects in the colony, it will be 
safe from the attacks of Bambata and his followers; homes will not 
be laid waste; promising young men will not perish on the battle- 
field; women will not be bowed down by a grief too bitter for tears. 
These disconnected thoughts, Mr. President, will run off into 
the gulf of oblivion and there be forgotten. But may the noble 
voices ringing in earnest tones from the far-off native land for 
education, remain with you and with this body as a perpetual 
prayer. 

Geeeting from Rev. S. Sato, of Japan, and of Oberlin 
Theological Seminary. 

I AM much pleased to have the honor of speaking to you on 
this great memorial day as a representative of the Doshisha Col- 
lege, but I am very sorry that I can speak neither Anglo-English 
nor American-English. 

I hope you will not rebuke me for speaking my own English, 
that is to say, Japanese-English. 

When the late Dr. Neesima came back from America to Japan 
it was a short time after the restoration. At that time the Japa- 
nese government needed such a man as Dr. Neesima, who was well 
acquainted with the conditions of foreign countries. So they 
offered him a high official position, but he declined it, preferring 
to establish the Doshisha College at Kyoto with Drs. Davis, 
Green, and Learned, American missionaries. 

At first they were very much persecuted by the prefecture 
government and the priests of Honguwawji temple. Nevertheless 
in a few years the attendance at the college increased rapidly. 

Dr. Neesima was much encouraged, and in the seventeenth year 
of Meiji, that is, 1883, he declared his wish to change the Doshisha 
College to a university. He raised a great sum of money in Japan, 
but it was not large enough, so he came to this country and went 
to Europe to ask his friends to help him. Though he was not able 
to accomplish his object then, yet the Doshisha has grown to be a 
noted institution, not only in Japan, .but in other countries. 

After the late Dr. Neesima's death, many graduates withdrew 
from the Doshisha. Some of them became ma3^ors of large cities 



ADDRESSES BY NATIVE CHRISTIANS. 139 

or managers of the imperial Japanese bank, and other important 
financial institutions. Others have high government positions,, 
and still others became members of the Imperial Diet, or famous 
editors. This seemed to be a great crash to the Doshisha. Yes, 
it was a great blow to the Doshisha at that time. But it was 
God's wilt, I think. By their going out they prepared positions 
for their followers. So a great many fields are opened to gradu- 
ates of the Doshisha. 

Now they, graduates of the Doshisha, are establishing their 
influence in every branch of society in Japan. They may not be 
working directly for the conversion of the people to Christianity, 
but they are preparing the way for preachers and pastors by 
their good reputation, ability, and trustworthiness. They are 
influential factors, we may say, in the present social upheaval, 
that is to say, moral elevation of the country. 

These things may be considered by some to be secularization 
of religious principles, but I don't think so, because the object of 
the propagation of Christianity is to reform society and help the 
people to lead Christlike lives. 

The result is that new Japan is much benefited by the Doshisha 
and American missionaries. Even among the Japanese in the 
Hawaiian Islands, and on the Pacific coast, you will find that 
almost all of the leading men, pastors, editors, and business men, 
have been related to the Doshisha, directly or indirectly. 

Greeting from Rev. Philip Reitinger, of Bohemia. 

I FEEL deeply grateful for being permitted to stand before you, 
honored officers of this mission Board, and before you, ladies and 
gentlemen, representing the Congregational churches. 

When asked to bring to this meeting the greetings of the people 
of Austria, I found it encouraging that your honored secretary 
wrote, '' Only a few words would be possible." For my tongue is 
yet bound, and too awkward to express in correct English my own 
feelings of gratitude to God and to you. Congregational Christians, 
and still less able to express well the feeling of hundreds and 
thousands of my people, some of them in this country, others 
beyond the sea. 

And when your honored secretary wrote: '' The fact of your 
presence will speak perhaps even louder than your words," he 
unwittingly said what has become true in my life with a very 



140 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

special meaning. For had it not been for the messengers of the 
.Cross whom you had sent over the sea into Bohemia's priest-ridden 
masses ; instead of standing before you today saved by the grace 
of God, the Moldau River in Bohemia would be my grave, and my 
soul lost forever. 

For the third time I come in direct contact with this honored 
American Board. Unforgotten stands before my soul your 
missionary, Dr. H. A. SchaufSer, and his helper, William Frey- 
tag. I see him yet, as, in 1873, in the street of Budweis, Bohemia, 
putting a large loaf of rye bread into the hands of a Catholic 
widow to help satisfy the pangs of hunger of five unfed children, 
that loaf of bread becoming indeed the symbol of the higher bread 
which for two years, in gospel meeting and Sunday-school, has 
been broken to the widow and her children, only to be torn from 
them by the ruthless persecution of a Roman Catholic bishop, 
who drove the missionary from the city, but was too impotent to 
rob the mother of the Bible and tear out the many precious seed 
corns from God's Word. 

Ten years later, misled by bad companions, disregarding all 
councils of wisdom, by passions chained to vices ruinous to body 
and soul, living a life too dissolute to be described here, by 
exposure driven to the brink of despair, I stood on the bridge 
over the Moldau River to end a miserable life, when through the 
darkened mind flashed the thought about the God whom ten 
years before I had learned to know in that Protestant American 
Sunday-school, and, afraid to die and to meet that God, I turned 
away to try life over again. Just then, by the leading of God, for 
the second time in my life I met the same messengers of your 
Board in Briinn, Moravia. After eighteen months of intense 
struggle I could rejoice in the saving power of the cross of 
Christ and could consecrate my life to the service of other dying 
souls. 

But do I weary you with a tale of a saved individual? Thank 
God the names of Budweis, Bohemia, and Briinn, Moravia, are 
again on the list of the Austrian Mission. For years they were 
there. Was the money and labor spent in vain? I hear yet 
my friend, the dying college student, on his deathbed, beg your 
missionary to be received into the church, in spite of the knowledge 
that a short time before, at the grave of a converted sister, the 
government did not permit even the Lord's Prayer to be said. 
And there is my own young brother, a boy of nine years, too 



ADDRESSES BY NATIVE CHRISTIAXS. 141 

weak to hold himself up alone in bed. Yet kneel he must, day 
after day on the floor, then the bed, to pray to his Saviour. Wish- 
ing that he could go without dying to his Saviour, in the last hour 
he assures his mother that he would soon send her the name of 
the street and the number of the house, so that his mother might 
find him in the heavenly city. This is the child of the mother 
who, not long before this, by police force wanted to bring home the 
oldest daughter for the crime of accepting the Saviour and joining 
that despised American Free Church. That daughter, now for 
many years in the service of our beloved home missionary society, 
has been bringing souls to Christ from among the multitudes of 
Bohemians in Cleveland, Ohio, and at the same time helped educate 
missionaries for our Slavic home work. That mother and another 
daughter have given their hearts to God and are members of his 
church. In Austria one labors as a deaconess; in the state of Iowa 
two, father and son, both missionary pastors, are helping redeem 
this land for Christ. Near Ward Academy, in South Dakota, 
another missionary pastor, born into the new life in Moravia, is 
now upholding the banner of the cross. In such ways even seem- 
ingly lost labor of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign 
Missions is repaid. 

Roman Catholicism in Austria ha^ borne her daughters, — blind- 
ing ignorance, dead formalism, religious indifference, coarse 
atheism. Awakening, but yet superficially, the nations of Austria 
begin to cry, '^ Away from Rome! '^ The small number of Protes- 
tant state churches needed a stirring up, an awakening of con- 
science, a rebuke for inactivity, an inspiration to work. The Lord 
through you has sent forth what was needed. The leaven of 
the kingdom is newly put into Bohemia, the Spirit of God is stir- 
ring again the land of John Huss. A young generation is rising, 
fully able to touch the social, the national, and spiritual life in 
unmistakable and undeniable ways. Regeneration is on the way, 
has begun. And at the day when the nations shall '^ carry the 
glory and honor of the nations into the city of God/' how many 
sons and daughters of Bohemia there will be who will sing the 
praises of the Lamb, which to know they have learned through 
the work of our beloved missionary board. 

In the name of that people I say today: God bless you, honored 
oflScers of the American Board; God be your richest reward, 
Congregational churches of America. 



142 the haystack centennial. 

Greeting from Senor Frederic R. Ponce, Professor in 

COLEGIO InTERNACIONAL OF GuADALAJARA, MeXICO. 

A prominent statesman of my country said, some time ago, 
that the reUgious seed the missionaries were sowing among us 
could not be fruitful because we are not able to receive any 
religious idea that was not connected with our human sacrifices. 
But we rejoice that our great statesman was in error, because the 
work of the Board is at present so extensive in my country; our 
churches are increasing to a degree that is very satisfactory, and 
our schools are gaining the good-will of a great part of the nation. 
We, the natives, are clearly proving that we are susceptible of 
receiving not only a kind of rough religion, but the best kind; 
that by the gospel of our Lord, owing to the consecration and the 
efforts that your missionaries are making among us, we are enter- 
ing into an era of spiritual progress such as may be shown by the 
reports given by the different workers in my country. 

I am glad to manifest to you that my government appreciates, 
more than ever before, the good kind of work that missionaries are 
doing in Mexico, and, in some of the states, has liberally offered 
its good influences in order to give a more important character to 
that work. 

We expect that, in a future not distant, God will prepare impor- 
tant things for our Christian churches in Mexico, because although 
our missionaries are very few in number, they are very strong in 
mind, and they are consecrated to the hard work of transforming 
a country which for many years was the cradle of fanaticism and 
revolutions of all kinds. 

For the good selection that you have made of your missionaries 
to be sent to my country, and for the transformation that our 
religious life has experienced, owing to your initiative in sending 
to us your spiritual light, we sincerely give you all many thanks. 
We sincerely wish that you accept our gratitude for your valuable 
cooperation in sending to Mexico your noble missionaries, your 
money, and, above all, your Christian spirit and your prayers. 
Be sure that God will pay you abundantly. 



THE MEN OF THE HAYSTACK. 143 



THANK OFFERING AND PRAYER MEETING. 

Mr. John R. Mott was in charge of the exercises which cul- 
minated in a thank offering of generous proportions. He spoke of 
the year to come, of the need of yet greater devotion of money and 
Uves to the work. The offering was made a spiritual act of wor- 
ship and not a mere '^ taking of the collection." Pledges w^ere 
sent in on the cards, and later these were announced from the plat- 
form, until they came too fast for the readers to keep pace with 
them. Afterwards the totals, amounting to upwards of twelve 
thousand dollars, were given out, and all joined in singing the 
Doxology. Subsequent gifts made the whole amount up to 
$12,918.45. 

After the offering. Dr. Luther D. Wishard told of the series of 
personal factors that have been engaged together as providential 
causes of the growth of foreign missions. This most interesting 
address was followed up by a brief prayer meeting. Toward its 
close the chiming of the college bells was heard for fifteen minutes 
pealing forth an invitation to an organ recital which was held at 
the close of day in the jMemorial Chapel. 



THE MEN OF THE HAYSTACK THE FORERUNNERS OF 
THE STUDENT VOLUNTEER MOVEMENT. 

Luther D. Wishard. 

DwiGHT L. Moody pronounced the Christian uprising in uni- 
versities the greatest Christian movement of the nineteenth cen- 
tury. It is surely fitting that the unconscious part which the 
men of the haystack performed in the initial stage of one of the 
greatest eras in church history should be fully recognized at this 
celebration of the birth of American foreign missions. 

It is a matter of no ordinary interest that the members of that 
first band of student volunteers for foreign missions sought to 
extend their spirit and aim to other colleges*. A deputation visited 
Union. One of the men enrolled as a student in Middlebury and 
another in Yale, in order that, by permanent residence in those 
institutions, they might reproduce the Williams program. Their 



144 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

efforts, however, did not seem to effect their purpose. The tide of 
spiritual Hfe in the American colleges at that time was near its 
lowest ebb. The colleges were fields for missionary endeavor 
rather than recruiting stations for outgoing missionaries. Their 
seeming failure, however, was not real, as we shall now proceed 
to show by stretching before you a chain of facts whose links 
span the century, and connect the five men of the haystack with 
a movement which has mustered the young men of five continents. 

The first of these golden links already alluded to consisted in 
the effort of the Williams' men to make the missionary movement 
intercollegiate, the only visible result of which was the mission 
band organized at Andover, whose ranks were reinforced by the 
addition of Adoniram Judson, Gordon Hall, and others. 

The second link consisted in the formation of the American 
Board, the first division of the present grand army of American 
missionary societies and missionaries. -Shortly after this, the 
men of the haystack disappeared from the records of the century's 
missionary history. James Richards went to Ceylon, where he 
speedily finished his work and was laid to rest under a tamarind 
tree on a college campus, a fitting resting-place for one who had 
been connected with events which were destined to make the 
colleges of Ceylon, India, Asia, and the world home and foreign 
mission stations. Mills also soon fought his fight and finished his 
course and was buried in the Atlantic Ocean, on whose bosom hosts 
of missionaries were to be borne on their way to the '' darkest 
corners of the earth," which, at that epoch-making meeting under 
the edge of the haystack, Mills declared could be reached by the 
influence of that little band of then unheard-of college boys. 

Two of the American Board's first missionaries, members of the 
Andover band, reached Bombay, and while there wrote a pam- 
phlet, which should be reprinted during this centennial year, 
entitled, " The Conversion of the World: an Appeal for Six Hun- 
dred Millions," the then supposed population of non-Christian 
lands. That first, faint, far-off voice has been caught up and 
repeated by student after student, until now a sound like the 
voice of many waters is ringing round the world the sublime 
college cry, '' The evangelization of the world in this generation." 

Among the readers of the little pamphlet was Dr. John Scudder, 
a physician in New York, who discovered the pamphlet on a table 
in a sick room where he was administering professionally. Its 
divine appeal moved him to a speedy decision to devote his profes- 



THE MEN OF THE HAYSTACK. 145 

sional talents to the foreign missionary cause. He was America's 
first foreign medical missionary. 

The day he sailed, a boy stood in the crowd which gathered 
on Fulton Wharf in New York to bid Godspeed to the outgoing 
missionaries, Dr. and Mrs. Scudder. The sight of the heroic 
couple with their faces set toward the field of their glorious life- 
work kindled a fire in the life of that boy, James Brainerd Taylor, 
which never died out, which in some bright realm is doubtless 
burning yet, and will burn after the stars shall have burned out. 
The inspiration of that hour led him to turn away from a promising- 
business career to dedicate his life to the gospel ministry. After 
a preparatory course at Lawrenceville, he entered Princeton 
College, and while there, with the cooperation of Peter Gulick, 
the destined head of one of America's foremost missionary families, 
he founded the Christian society which still lives as the Phila- 
delphian Society, or Young Men's Christian Association, of the 
University. That society has been the center of the Christian 
activities of the college to the present day. 

In 1876 the society united with the international organization 
of Young jMen's Christian Associations, and in 1877 proposed and 
effected the Intercollegiate Young Men's Christian Association. 
It is to be noted that the original idea of the intercollegiate move- 
ment does not seem to have embodied any provision whatever for 
promoting the cause of foreign missions. The plans of the promoters 
of the movement primarily contemplated the American student, 
and secondarily the young men of our cities, in whose evangeliza- 
tion the students were to be enlisted — a broad purpose, but not 
the broadest. The narrow conception of the student movement 
was, however, short-lived. The men of the haystack were to be 
reckoned with. Their world-wide vision was to be imparted to 
their spiritual descendants, the members of the society founded 
by Taylor. Their voices were to be heard from across the century, 
challenging their successors to take up the world-wide work which 
they had begun. It was in a lecture room in Union Seminary, 
New York City, that the first secretary of the intercollegiate 
movement heard the story of the haystack meeting and the 
immediate subsequent events. The feature of the narrative which 
naturally arrested his attention was the effort to make the 
missionary movement intercollegiate. As he mused, the fire 
burned. The idea speedily possessed him that the time had come 
to resume the work which the men of the haystack had laid down, 



146 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

and call the college world to the greatest duty that ever faced it. 
Accordingly steps were taken to arrange for the fullest considera- 
tion of the obligations of students to the cause of foreign missions 
at the forthcoming conference of students in Baltimore, May, 
1879. Mark Hopkins was consulted and was asked to send a 
strong Williams delegate to the Baltimore Conference in order 
that the voice of Williams might be heard in the revival of the 
movement born on the Williams campus. Henry P. Perkins was 
Dr. Hopkins' response. The Student Conference met amid inspir- 
ing surroundings. The main convention was presided over by 
Mr. Moody, who then first came into touch with the movement 
which he was to help make the greatest Christian movement of 
the century. The cause of foreign missions and the obligations 
of the colleges to the same were fully considered and the Student 
Missionary Movement was born again. 

For seven years the missionary idea was vigorously promoted 
among the American colleges, with steadily growing results. The 
first great manifestation of the movement occurred at Mt. Hermon, 
Mass., where, in 1886, was held the first of the Christian Student 
Summer Conferences, which are now planted throughout the world, 
and it should be noted that the conference was called largely for 
the purpose of offering ample opportunity for the consideration of 
the claims of foreign missions upon the college world. The mighty 
impulse which the month of Bible study at Mt. Hermon gave to 
the missionary program of the intercollegiate movement lifted it 
upon a plane of such prominence as to give the impression that the 
missionary department was the movement itself. While the name 
of the movement was changed from the Foreign Missionary Depart- 
ment of the Intercollegiate Young Men's Christian Association 
to the Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions, it has 
continued to the present time as a department of the one all- 
embracing student movement, and as such has realized its greatest 
usefulness. 

From that time the world-wide extension of the intercollegiate 
movement proceeded with mighty strides. It had already become 
international by embracing the University of Toronto, where the 
Canadian contingent started. It now extends from Prince 
Edward Island to the Rocky Mountains. It had already crossed 
the Atlantic and entered the University of Berlin. The German 
students have held Christian conferences since 1890. It was 
speedily inaugurated in Scandinavia and Great Britain and 



THE MEN OF THE HAYSTACK. 147 

passed rapidly into France, Holland, Switzerland, and Italy. 
The students of Asia and of South Africa and of Australia rapidly 
enlisted and were finally federated, in 1895, in a AYorld's Student 
Christian Federation, whose first conference was held in an old 
castle in Sweden which Gustavus Vasa had built over three cen- 
turies before. For the first time in history the students of the 
world have been enrolled and united in a movement one of whose 
main purposes is the evangelization of the world in this generation. 

The first American- meeting of the world's federation was held 
at Williamstown in the summer of 1897. Students were present 
from thirteen nations and from five continents. Meetings were 
held day after day in the parlors of '' The Greylock," with the 
map of the world spread before the delegates, and plans were dis- 
cussed for making the colleges in all lands centers of evangelization. 

One evening the delegates gathered in Mission Park around the 
shaft of Berkshire marble which marks the spot where the hay- 
stack stood. It is significant that as many continents were repre- 
sented there as the number of men who made that place sacred by 
the prayer meeting held there ninety-one years before. The 
story of that meeting was told and the series of incidents recounted 
which connected the men who gathered there in 1806 with the 
men who assembled there in 1897: the effort to extend the move- 
ment to other colleges, the formation of the Andover Band, the 
raising up of Gordon Hall and his associate, Samuel Newell, who 
in Bombay wrote the pamphlet which led Scudder to Asia as a 
medical missionary, the scene on Fulton Wharf, the impression 
made on James Brainerd Taylor, the founding of the Philadelphian 
Society, the union of that society with the Young Men's Christian 
Association fifty years later, the organization by that society of 
the Intercollegiate Young Men's Christian Association, the organi- 
zation of the missionary department which broadened out into 
the Student Yolunteer Movement for Foreign Missions, and the 
expansion of the movement to the colleges of five continents. 
After completing the narrative, the speaker asked the delegates 
to repeat in their various languages the words of Mills, " We can 
do it if we will." The students all together rang out the college 
cry until the old Berkshire Hills sent it back in echoes, " We can 
do it if we will." The German students cried, " Wir konnen wenn 
wir wollen." The French and Swiss repeated it, also the dele- 
gate from South Africa in Cape Dutch. The delegate from Nor- 
way, the Old Yiking as he was called, uttered in his stentorian 



148 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

tones that matchless war-cry, and then said in his broken EngUsh, 
'^ To vill is to can." The delegates from India repeated it in 
Tamil and Marathi, and the Chinese in his rich Mandarin, followed 
by the Japanese in his musical mother tongue, and it is worthy of 
note that the chairman of that Federation Conference at Williams- 
town was a Japanese, probably the first occasion when a world's 
meeting was presided over by a Japanese and that meeting a 
Christian gathering held within fifty years of the first presentation 
of the Protestant gospel to the Sunrise Kingdom! 

The speaker then called on the delegates from the different 
nations to indicate the most suitable place in their respective 
countries for a Federation Conference. The British delegate 
replied lona, where Columba lived and sent the gospel back into 
Ireland and on into Scotland. The Swiss replied Geneva, where 
John Calvin preached the gospel of liberty. The Germans cried 
the Wartburg, where Luther gave the Bible to his people in their 
mother tongue. The Japanese replied Kumamoto, on whose 
flowery hilltop a band of Japanese students dedicated their lives 
to Christ and the conversion of their countrymen, and set in opera- 
tion events which resulted in building up one of the foremost 
Christian universities in Asia, the Doshisha. The delegates from 
India replied Serampore, where William Carey worked and Henry 
Martyn prayed in the pagoda by the Ganges. And then the 
students grasped hands and rang out again the college cry, '' We 
can do it if we will,'^ whereupon the German delegates began 
singing '^ Ein^ feste Burg ist unser Gott,'' and again the delegates 
cried as the twilight deepened and the time for separation had 
come, " We can do it if we will." No one who saw the fire in the 
eyes of those college student leaders and the blood in their faces, 
and felt the thrill that ran round that circle of dauntless hearts 
can doubt that they can do it and will do it, and that before 
another century shall have passed a meeting will be held at this 
historic spot, to celebrate the completion of the glorious work to 
which those pioneers of the greatest Christian movement of the 
century, if not the greatest of the Christian era, dedicated their 
lives. 



WEDNESDAY EVENING SESSIONS. 149 



WEDNESDAY EVENING SESSIONS. 

On Wednesday eA^ening the meetings were held in sections, 
filling five churches with good congregations. 

Those who remained at Williamstown gathered in the Congre- 
gational church. After the address by Rev. Nehemiah Boynton, 
D.D., a number of converts and missionaries were introduced by 
Secretary Harry W. Hicks, who presided. As the three native 
Christians who spoke had made addresses at the afternoon session, 
their evening greetings are not here reprinted. We cannot print 
in this volume the words of Dr. Boynton, as he had no manu- 
script and they were not reported in shorthand. For like reasons 
the address of Dr. Edwin St. John Ward, who is under appoint- 
ment to Diabekir, Eastern Turkey, is omitted. 

At North Adams the meeting in the Methodist church (which 
was the official evening service of the Board) was led by President 
Capen. Rev. Washington Gladden, D.D., who was formerly a 
pastor in North Adams, offered the opening prayer at this service. 
Telegrams were read at this session from the Chicago Association 
of Congregational Churches and also from the Foreign Missionary 
Society of the Reformed Church, and an address from the Arme- 
nian Evangelical Alliance of America was presented. This will 
be found in the following pages after the address by President 
King. President King, of Oberlin, and Dr. Henry E. Cobb were 
the principal speakers. 

The young people gathered in the Baptist Church and were led 
by Rev. Francis E. Clark, D.D. They listened to two strong 
addresses from Mr. John R. Mott and Prof. Harlan P. Beach.^ 
At the Congregational church. President Day, of Andover Semi- 
nary, was in the chair and delivered the first address. He was 
followed by Rev. T. C. Richards, the biographer of Mills. 

The meeting at Adams was in the CongTegational church, led 
by the pastor, Rev. J. Spencer Voorhees. Among the speakers 
were Rev. Enoch F. Bell, a former missionary in Japan; Rev. 
Brownell Gage, Yale Missionary in China; Mr. Kulasinghe, ^Ir. 
Fei Chi Hao, Rev. Robert Ernest Hume, and Mr. William Staub. 

These five simultaneous gatherings, all well attended, testified 
to the general interest felt in these centennial meetings and their 
widely diffused influence. 



150 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 



THE HOSPITAL IN CESAREA. 
Rev. William S. Dodd, M.D., of Western Turkey. 

The chronology of the medical work in Talas, past, present, and 
future, is that it began as house-to-house practice in 1886. In 
1892 the dispensary was built, with an operating room and space 
for a dozen patients to spread their own beds, mostly dirty and 
often worse. In 1897 we put seven beds into our small space and 
managed it in semi-hospital style, with a trained nurse. In 1900 
the present fine building was erected, where there are forty beds, 
and we hope before long to make an addition and increase the 
capacity to sixty beds. This last is the future part of the 
chronology. 

The growth of this work has been steady and substantial. 
There is no sudden popularity for the missionary physician enter- 
ing on his work. He must win his way there as everywhere else; 
he must prove his fitness, and he must prove it in the face of oppo- 
sition, sometimes bitter and malignant. There will be disap- 
pointed patients who will make his heart sick. There will be 
religious opponents, glad to catch at any opportunity to justify 
their hostility. Still more there are jealous native physicians who 
use every means to overthrow influence. They said of me when I 
first went that I was only a boy who had come to finish my medical 
education among them. Every error, and everything that can be 
construed into an error, is magnified to the people in order to 
undermine their confidence in us. Summoned to court on a 
charge of homicide, because I failed to save a man who had been 
stabbed in the abdomen and left by them to die of internal 
hemorrhage; when meeting with a company of native physicians 
for consultation, treated with sneering remarks about my pre- 
tending to do religious work for a large salary {" Give me your 
salary and I'll be a missionary too, and preach the gospel as well 
as you," was said to me by a notoriously evil doctor); or being 
pressed by a medical official in a covert yet understood manner 
for a bribe to prevent his making a report to Constantinople with 
a view to having the hospital closed, — such are some of the 
fraternal amenities that the native medical " fraternity " shower 
upon us. 

And yet I would not have it thought that their animosity is 



THE HOSPITAL IX CESAREA. 151 

directed exclusively against us; they do the same thing among 
themselves when they have opportunity; but thej^ are roused 
to opposition in proportion as they see another more successful 
than themselves. The words of the Jews in regard to the apostles 
might be put in their mouths^ '' That a notable work hath been 
wrought by them we cannot deny, but that it spread no further 
among the people let us threaten them." 

On the other hand, the foreigner has some advantages. By 
the fact of his being a foreigner he is supposed to be better edu- 
cated, he has a prestige from his power of appealing in government 
matters to his consul or ambassador. But these are comparatively 
unimportant. Upon the foundation of the general reputation of 
the American missionar}' he must build the reputation of his own 
professional ability, and still more of his Christian integrity, integ- 
rity in private life and in the practice of his profession. '^ I have 
come to you because I know you will tell me the truth," is what 
we hear over and over again from our patients, and it expresses 
their idea of our professional honesty. " If I am going to die, I 
want to die by your hands " expresses their trust in our profes- 
sional ability. 

In 1887, the first year of my practice in Turke}^, I had, all told, 
not over 500 patients, and did perhaps 20 operations. Now our 
patients number about 8,000 a year and the operations 560. In 
1898, when we began to take in-patients, there were 82. Last year, 
in the large new hospital building, we had 401. It is this large 
amount of hospital work that has necessarily kept down the 
number of our out-patients for lack of time to attend to them. 

In our money relations with the people our experience differs 
much from what I read of the experience of missionary physicians 
in some other lands. I have read that in one of the hospitals in 
Madura no fees are asked, and not only is the hospital supported 
by the freewill offerings of grateful patients, but the building was 
erected largely by gifts from native sources. No such plan can be 
carried out with us. Whether the actual poverty is greater in 
Turkey than in India, I cannot say. Whether the feeling of 
poverty is greater where it is due to governmental conditions, as 
in Turkey, than where it is due to natural or inherited conditions, 
I cannot say. Perhaps it is simply the innate meanness of the 
people. But certain it is in our region, and I think it is true for 
all the Turkish empire, that our income would be almost nothing 
if it were left to be given in this way. We charge regular fees for 



152 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

regular services whenever we think the people able to pay it. We 
ask payment for operations and for hospital treatment, and we 
require it in advance. It is very seldom that we find any one who 
considers such requirement as anything out of the way or insulting 
to themselves. They know too well the universal conditions of 
the country, the nature of the people, and what they would them- 
selves do in similar circumstances. If objections are made to us 
on the score of its being derogatory to them, and that we are insult- 
ing them by doubting their word, this too often only deepens our 
distrust, and makes us feel that this is a case where we should hold 
to our rule more rigidly. Ability to deceive is a large part of their 
capital. To persuade the doctor by a pitiful tale is cleverness. 
Every piaster thus saved is clear gain. To battle with this is the 
most distasteful part of the physician's duty. A villager came to 
me from a region which I knew to be not poor. I asked him forty 
dollars for a serious operation and board and expenses in the 
hospital for the necessary time. He begged, he was poor, he had a 
large family, his only yoke of oxen had been seized for taxes, he 
had come three days' journey on foot because he could not hire a 
donkey, he had absolutely nothing, but since he was ashamed to 
come to the doctor with nothing, he had borrowed six dollars at 
five per cent, a month interest, he would give me that. In spite 
of the long practice in disbelief, I finally accepted him for that. 
He said he would go to the khan to get his money which was 
sewed up in his donkey's saddle. (He had said before that he 
had no donkey.) My shrewd office boy suspected him and fol- 
lowed him secretly; saw him go, not to the khan but around the 
corner into a field, undo his girdle and leather belt, take out twelve 
gold pieces worth about fifty dollars, keep one to give me with 
some silver change, and put the rest securely back in hiding. 

On the other hand, there are cases of gratitude. There was a 
poor woman, the support of her family, which included a husband 
and several children, who had been miserable for several years 
from chronic appendicitis. She was taken free for operation and 
treatment, and went home cured. When I called on her some time 
afterward, sitting on the floor, I asked her how she was. The 
tears came to her eyes as she expressed her gratitude. Then going 
to a box in the corner of the room she dug down to the bottom of 
the old ragged clothing there, took out a piece of ragged skirt, 
untied a knot in it, and brought me, wrapped up in a paper — a 
gold piece! '^ That I had saved up for my funeral," she said, '' so 



THE HOSPITAL IX CESAREA. . 153 

that my children should not be burdened to bury me. Now I 
shall not need it, and I want it to go to the hospital." You, w^ho 
meet with such cases often, can hardly appreciate how this instance 
of what was in spirit a true widow's mite, though much more in 
intrinsic value, went to our hearts. And every year since, she has 
made a contribution of fifty cents to the hospital. 

But I want you to understand another advance that has been 
made in hospital work. It is not merely that the people have 
learned to trust us, put themselves in our hands with a childlike 
faith that makes us almost shrink from the responsibility, beg for 
a capital operation for a trivial ache because they have heard 
that we can cut out anything and everything from the body, and 
that so the number of patients has grown; it is not only that 
they are learning what comfort comes from perfect cleanliness, not 
only that many a patient longs to stay on in the hospital after 
being cured, not only that they see equal care for rich and poor, 
and also learn how honorable it is to serve when the motive is 
noble, — the perfect management of the hospital by the super- 
intendent, the spirit of the nurses, teaches these things. 

But above all, the knowledge of the hospital as a '' House of 
God " has spread among the people. '' They pray for the patients 
there instead of cursing them/' they say. " It is more your 
prayers than your skill that gives you success," a Moslem said 
to us. '^ I am afraid of the prayers there," a hardened criminal 
said. A mother brought her son, a young man, for treatment, 
and sought a word with me privately beforehand. " Whatever 
is the matter with him," she said, " please tell him anyway that 
he needs a month's treatment in the hospital, because I know 
you will make him good here. He is a bad boy, I cannot do 
anything with him, and that is the reason I am bringing him here." 
It was an Armenian teacher, an old man, who, when he went home, 
said, '' I have spent my life in teaching, I have read the Bible 
much and talked about it and explained it to my people. I have 
thought that I was a good man and serving God. But I see now 
it was all outside. I have found Jesus here." 

A place where the love of Christ rules, although we realize how 
imperfectly that motive bears sway, has an atmosphere that every 
patient must breathe. The Bible is everywhere, in the wards 
and in the rooms; every nurse is judged not only by fitness for 
nursing, but for personal spiritual work. It is not upon any one 
thing that we can lay our finger and say, " By that means or 



154 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

through that person this patient was influenced/' but by the spirit 
of the place. And this is a composite, made up by the spirit with 
which he is received and welcomed to the hospital; the labor 
bestowed on him by the physicians, by the ladies in the hospital 
and the ladies of our families, and by the native nurses; by the 
cleanliness and order and good food; by the morning and evening 
prayers in the wards; the Bible at the bedside for themselves to 
read; the sitting down by them not merely to inquire of their 
bodily health, but for seeking their higher welfare; the Sabbath 
services; the teaching to read; the ministrations of the children of 
our families with picture cards and flowers, — I never saw a 
patient yet, be he Armenian, Greek, or Moslem, whose soul was 
not affected by this atmosphere. And when they have come to 
realize, as so many do sooner or later, that nothing but the love 
of Christ can create this atmosphere, then we feel that we have 
succeeded in preaching Christ to those who would never have 
heard or listened otherwise, and in a way that the Master himself 
specially blessed. 

The hospital everywhere stands for life in constant battle with 
death. The missionary hospital stands for life, both temporal 
and eternal, in battle with death, both physical and spiritual. 



THE AMERICAN COLLEGE, MADURA. 155 



THE AMERICAN COLLEGE, MADURA, AND THE CON- 
QUEST OF AN EMPIRE. 

Pres. William M. Zumbro, of Pasumalai College, Madura. 

This year thousands of young men and women will study that 
book prepared under the auspicies of the Young People's Mission- 
ary Movement, " The Christian Conquest of India,'' by Bishop 
Thoburn. 

In the past there have been many conquests of India, and the 
motives back of them have been ambition, plunder, political and 
commercial supremacy. What is the motive that drives the 
Christian army on to conquest? One word will express it, — 
service. The Christian host goes forth to win India by serving it. 

I wish today to speak of our college as a strategic center, where 
we are equipping and sending out various columns to join the 
army moving forward to this Christian conquest of India. We 
take as the fundamental principle in the charter of our college this 
proposition: Wherever there is a real human need there is a 
legitimate call to Christian service. Our warrant for this is the 
example and the command of Jesus Christ. 

The Needs of India. 

Many times during the past year I have been asked by friends 
in America, " What need is there for service in India? " " India," 
say they, '' is a land of ancient civilization, of great religions, of 
vast population; what need has she that is not already supplied? " 
It is a fair question. If there is no need, then there is no call to 
service, the idea of a Christian conquest of India becomes mean- 
ingless, the enterprise should be abandoned, our college closed. 

Do you ask, " What need is there in India? " There is need 
for food. One half of the agricultural population never know 
what it is to have their hunger fully satisfied," says Sir Charles 
Elliot. There is need for industrial training. Industrially, India 
is five hundred years behind the rest of the world. Her industries 
are all the old hand industries; she has never made the transition 
to the machine. Thousands of the artisan class are being thrown 
out of employment, because they are no longer able to compete with 
their hand-made goods in the world market today. 



156 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

Sociologists tell us that the contests between nations in the 
future are to be decided, not on the field of battle, but in the 
workshop and the factory; the leaders of these contests are to be 
trained, not at West Point or Sandhurst, but in trade schools and 
technical institutes. If this is so, and if the hunger of India is 
ever to be satisfied, then the artisans of India must be trained to 
meet, by their own skill, the skill of other nations. We hope to 
give something of this training in the department of industries 
which we are just starting. 

Others have said to me during the year, '' What reason have 
you to think that you are serving India by your educational work? 
India is a land of hoary civilization, of a vast literature; surely 
there is no need for your trying to educate the people of India." 
No need? See that boy, Kerupusawmy, there, clothed with a 
string tied around his loins. He cannot read. Ninety out of 
every hundred boys and men in India are in the same fix. 

Is there need for schools? The missionaries of the Madura 
Mission believe that there is need, and so they have established 
more than two hundred village schools, which are scattered through- 
out the length and breadth of the Madura country to help meet 
this need. And in the normal department of our college we are 
training from year to year the young men who are to go out as 
teachers in these schools. More than six hundred young men have 
been trained in our normal school and have gone out all over 
South India. And ever while we train them we try to keep 
before them that fundamental principle of our college charter, — 
service. 

Another need of India is for wholesome literature, and this 
we are trying to supply through our press at Pasumalai, from 
which every year go out tens of thousands of pages, translations 
from the best books of European and American writers, together 
with original publications and the two newspapers published 
there. 

But, says another, " India is under the British government, at 
least there is no governmental need that is not being adequately 
met." It is true that the British government controls India, and 
I think there is no country in the world where the chief officials 
have a higher average intelligence, ability, and integrity of pur- 
pose than the English official in India. But the English official 
is a mere handful in numbers when compared with the native 
official. 



the americax college. madura. 157 

Conditions in India. 

One of the most insistent needs in all lands today is for men in 
government service who have integrity of purpose and righteous- 
ness of character. The foundation of character is in religion. 
What is the situation in India? The government colleges, being 
under the pledge of religious neutrality, make no attempt to 
include religious teaching in their curriculum. Most colleges 
under native control do little to teach the doctrines of Hinduism, 
and such doctrines when taught have little compelling force today 
over the college student. Said a Brahman official the other day 
to one of our missionaries, " Young men who have been educated 
in government schools come out atheists and are unreliable in 
character. It is the missionaries who have taught us that there 
is one God. and the young men whom they educate come from the 
schools with faith in God and satisfactory stability of character.'' 
A number of the j^oung men trained in our college have gone into 
government service, have risen to good positions, and have become 
the trusted assistants of the English officials. 

Others have said to me, " You are making the greatest mistake 
of all by thinking that you are serving India by teaching another 
religion. India is the home of great religious systems, — the land 
of the Vedas and the Upanishads, the land of the Mahabarata 
and the Ramayana, the birthplace of Buddha, and the home of 
Rishis, — why need we send missionaries to India to preach another 
religion? '' We grant that there is truth in Hinduism; no one 
denies that today. But the crucial test of any religion is not its 
philosophical doctrine, but its methods of dealing with sin in 
men's lives. Philosophies may change, theologies may come and 
go, but sin ever remains the supreme curse of the world. No 
need for religious teaching in India? Go within that great temple 
of Menakshi in Madura, in underneath the great gopura, on 
through the long corridor, on through the great double brass door- 
way, till you stand at last in the open court at the " Swarna- 
pushpa-karini," or " golden lily tank." Observe that old man 
with nothing but a cloth tied around his waist, his forehead 
smeared with sacred ashes, the sacred thread thrown over his 
shoulder, emblem of the " twice-born." See him as he goes 
slowly down the stone steps to the water. See him take off the 
cloth that he is wearing and wash it, and as he goes a little further 
bathe his body in the water. Yet again note how, before he 



158 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

comes back up the steps and goes on to the shrine of the goddess, 
he takes up some of the sacred water in his hand and drinks it, 
that he may not only be clean without, but purified from sin 
within as well. Would you recommend that as a satisfactory 
cleansing for the sinners of America? 

One of the most insistent remarks that I have met during the 
year is this: " There is so much need in America, the wickedness 
is so great here, that I cannot help in India." In America the poor 
are sometimes robbed by the rich, but on the other hand there are 
those who plead the cause of the poor and the oppressed, and their 
voice is becoming even louder and more insistent. But in India, 
the low-caste man, absolutely refused admittance to the temples 
where the high-caste man worships, robbed, plundered, and 
oppressed in many ways, spurned and despised, his very shadow 
a pollution, has no one to lift up a voice on his behalf in all the 
pale of Hinduism. In America the social evil and easy divorce are 
all too common, but there are here those who in the name of 
Jehovah, God of righteousness, cry out against these things, and 
there are some doors that are shut in the face of the libertine. But 
in India the courtesan, the Nautch girl, has a recognized and 
honored place in all their great temples, and is a welcome guest 
in the homes of the rich. They are dedicated to the service of 
the gods as little girls, and intercourse with these temple girls is 
held to be an act of devotion to the god to whom they are theoret- 
ically married. The cup of iniquity of the Hindu priesthood is 
full, and there is no one to condemn. 

Others have said to me: " At least the people of India are 
fairly well satisfied with their religion; why force them to accept 
another which they do not want? " In the first place, the assump- 
tion that the people of India are being forced to accept a religion 
that they do not want is on the face of it absurd. In the second 
place, I am prepared to say, after eleven years' experience in India, 
that there are many, both men and women, who in their hearts 
desire to become open followers of Christ, who on account of the 
great opposition which they would meet on account of the caste 
system have not the courage to do so. Said a Brahman to one of 
our Madura missionaries recently: " I am one of many who see in 
the work of mission education an extreme good to India. There 
are many Brahmans who are baptized in heart. Christian educa- 
tion is working mighty changes in the character and life of the 
Hindu community." There is a strange, deep fascination which 



THE AMERICAN COLLEGE, MADURA. 159 

the person of Christ has for the Indian youth, when he is faithfully 
and lovingly presented to him. Said a Hindu student recently to 
the president of a mission college in India: " Our life in the college 
may not lead to our becoming Christians, but no student ever goes 
from here who would dare speak anything against Christ, or who 
can have anything but a deep reverence for him." 

No need for religious teaching in India? The American mis- 
sionaries believe that there is need, and so they have preached the 
gospel and they have trained others to preach the gospel, and the 
people have heard and accepted until there is now in our mission 
a Christian community of more than nineteen thousand, with 
twenty-six self-supporting churches w^ith Indian Christian pastors 
over them, and more than three hundred and fifty village congre- 
gations depending on the faithful ministry of catechist or school 
teacher for their instruction in the Word of Life, and for their exam- 
ple in Christian living. The pastors of these churches and most 
of the catechists for the village congregations have been trained 
in our college and theological seminary and have gone out, more 
than a thousand of them altogether, to lead the Christian church in 
its advance to the conquest of India. 

Do you see, then, how great and how manifold is the service 
which the Christian Church is called to render in this ancient land 
of India? Some of us have heard the call to this service and have 
gone out to give our lives to it as being all that we have to give. 
It is but little that we can do, and we stand in awe in presence of 
the mighty task which we have undertaken, and we are made 
humble by our own weakness and inefficiency, but we look up to 
Him whose is the might and the power. Not all of you can go to 
India. But this does not by any means prevent your being able 
to join in this service, and that, too, in a very important way. And, 
first, by prayer and sympathy. Theologies may change, but the 
promises of God still hold good. Second, if you cannot go your- 
self, you may supply the money which is needed, and which will 
make the service of those of us who are in the field many times 
more effective. 



160 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN TURKEY. 

Rev. Stephen Van Rensselaer Trowbridge, 
Formerly Assistant Pastor to Rev. S. Parkes Cadman, Brooklyn, 
N. Y., now under appointment of the American Board to go 
to Aintah, Turkey. 

It is not fair to use the phrase, " the unspeakable Turk." 
The people are not unspeakable; they are capable and worthy. 
I have heard educated Americans exclaim, " Sweep the unspeak- 
able Turks from the face of the earth ! " That is a most brutal and 
inhuman thought. It simply shows how the instincts of lynch 
law are not yet conquered in many hearts. Besides, there are 
twenty million Turks, and how could you sweep them from the 
face of the earth? You can drive a people from one country into 
another, but how could you extirpate a great and growing nation? 
It is as foolish as it is wrong to talk of such a thing. But you 
can redeem the Turkish nation from the bondage of a false reli- 
gion. You can establish the principles of liberty and truth, you 
can lift the people from their prejudices and bring the light of 
immortality to all hearts. 

The Turks met the Mohammedan religion as they were going 
southward, invading the country. Now for eight centuries they 
have held it fast — or it might better be said that the religion has 
held the Turks fast. Progress has been impossible under the 
tyrannous yoke of Islam. And yet there are many worthy ele- 
ments in Mohammedanism. We should be very unjust if we did 
not acknowledge this. Benevolence and hospitality are taught 
and practiced. 

The " brotherhood " of men, although restricted to Moslems, is 
far better than the caste system of India. The muezzins in every 
city and village five times a day remind the people of the duty of 
prayer, and the first half of the Moslem creed states the great truth 
of monotheism, " There is no god but God." But there is a dark 
side to all this. The figure of Mohammed has cast a mighty 
shadow on the earth. There are false and harmful elements in 
the religion which he instituted. The Mohammed who declared 
himself the seal of all the prophets, the Mohammed who asserted 
that he had been carried to the seventh heaven and that he had 
there held converse with God, this Mohammed who exalted him- 



CHRISTIAX MISSION'S IX TURKF.Y. 161 

self as superior to Moses and Christ, completely broke down under 
the temptations of pride and lust and revenge. He butchered 
three hundred Jewish captives in the market-place, and in his 
private life broke all the Mosaic commandments. He denied the 
divinity of Jesus, boldly asserted that some other person than 
Jesus was crucified on Calvary, and that the disciples invented 
the resurrection. He seems to have gone so far as to identify 
himself, by a clever play on words, with the promised Holy Spirit, 
or Paraclete. These are a few of the alleged revelations of Moham- 
med. You can well imagine how the intellectual life must be 
atrophied and education undeveloped under the tyranny of the 
Koran. Freedom of thought in science, in common law, and 
political policy, is practically impossible under the decrees of Islam. 
For those cases where the Koran does not contain explicit direc- 
tions, written tradition has accumulated a vast network of statutes. 

In Moslem lands the home life is unhappy, because it lacks the 
fine principles of Christian chivalry. ^larriage is degraded by 
the institution of polygamy, and a divorce may be pronounced 
in three words by the husband at any time. The wearing of the 
veil, and the forced seclusion of the women are unnatural and hurt- 
ful conditions. But there is another institution of oppression. 
Do you realize that slavery, human slavery, is authorized and 
practiced in Mohammedan lands today? Negro men and women, 
brought by painful journeys from the heart of Africa, beautiful 
white children from the Caucasus, are bought and sold for a price 
in the markets of those Turkish cities. These transactions are 
kept secret as much as possible, but I know of them from eye- 
witnesses. The lords in some of those great cities have from 
three hundred to four hundred slaves apiece. These are the 
actual conditions. We must work patiently for many years that 
our lives may count as a good, clean blow for the freedom of the 
slaves. It is my ambition, for the sake of Jesus Christ, to strike 
a last blow at the institution of slavery! 

A professor in one of our leading American educational institu- 
tions said to me recently: " The slaves in those Mohammedan 
countries are really better off as they are. They are taken care 
of by their masters, and it is better for them to remain slaves." 
" They are better taken care of " — my friends, I know how 
they are taken care of. They are beaten and cursed, and the}- 
have no justice in the courts. The women are maltreated and 
their children are taken from their arms to be sold. 



162 • THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

To right these wrongs and redeem the nation we have the gospel 
of Jesus Christ, not to hold, but to send. If the Moslem creed 
runs, " There is no god but God, and Mohammed is his prophet," 
my creed is, " There is no god but God, and Jesus Christ is the 
Saviour of the world." With Christian liberty comes the progress 
of science. Missionary hospitals and colleges and schools demon- 
strate the love that " beareth all things, belie veth all things, 
hopeth all things, endureth all things." The home life which was 
disgraced by Mohammed is honored and sanctified by Jesus Christ. 
By the Church of the living Christ, Turkey can be redeemed. 
In the face of all the obstacles and all the age-long prejudice, this 
can be done. Bishop Thomas Valpy French went into the mosque 
in Muscat one Easter morning not many years ago. The Arabs 
respected his venerable appearance and asked him to read the 
Koran from the pulpit. He replied that he had his own Scriptures 
with him. So he went down among the people and opened to 
the glorious twenty-third and twenty-fourth chapters of St. Luke's 
gospel. And that congregation of Mohammedans listened spell- 
bound to the marvelous record of Jesus' resurrection. Is that 
not a sign of what can be done in the redemption of Turkey? 

The blessed gospel of Jesus shall free the slaves as it did in 
Rome in those early days when the Catacombs resounded with the 
Christian hymns; as it did in India when the firm hand of the 
British government established the laws of personal justice. * The 
gospel shall free the slaves, as it did in East Africa when Living- 
stone and Mackay laid down their lives for the cause; as it did in 
America when Abraham Lincoln prayed and planned and toiled 
in the cabinet room at Washington. 

The institution of slavery has been abolished from all the 
countries under the sun, except the Barbary states, the kingdom 
of Persia, and the empire of Turkey. Today, under the sanction 
of Moslem law, men and women and children are being sold in 
the markets of Constantinople and Smyrna and Aleppo. You do 
not know all the tears and wretchedness. But the redemption 
of Turkey is at hand! God has intrusted to the Christian Church 
of today the gospel of freedom for those aching hearts. I shall 
close with a daring prophecy. Within this present century the 
backbone of the Turkish people shall be the ethics of Jesus of 
Nazareth. And the cross which for eight centuries has been dis- 
honored in that land shall be uplifted as the sign of forgiveness and 
peace. 



CHAXGES IX MISSIOXARY PRACTICE. 163 



CHANGES WITHIN THE CENTURY IN FOREIGN 
MISSIONARY THEORY AND PRACTICE. 

Rev. Henry C. Kixg, D.D., President of Oherlin College. 

No attempt is made in this paper to add another to the many 
general centennial surveys of missions that have appeared in 
recent years. Elaborate quotation of documents, too, is plainly 
impossible. And you will understand that while the statements 
of the paper may be supposed to be generally applicable^ they "^ill 
have reference primarily to the work of this Board. 

For help in getting the historical data implied in my subject, I 
am particularly indebted to Mr. Edward Warren Capen's careful 
research, and to Dr. E. E. Strong, though this historical material 
I shall be able to use, for the most part, not for direct quotation, 
but only as giving Avarrant for conclusions drawn. 

The subject assigned me was quite definitely indicated. I am 
asked to speak on " Changes within the Century in Foreign 
Missionary Theory and Practice, as respects the Need of Carrying 
the Gospel to Non-Christian Nations, as Respects the Attitude 
to be taken toward Non-Christian Religions, and as Respects the 
Method of Approaching these People and Winning Them to 
Christ." 

In the treatment of this subject I shall ask you to notice, first, 
that it is not possible to assert any absolute change in spirit and 
methods, but only relative contrasts; and that these contrasts, 
important though relative, are due to influences working at both 
the home and the foreign ends of the missionary enterprise. 
That is, I am to ask you to notice that the changes that have 
taken place are to be regarded, on the one hand, as the ine\'itable 
result of the gigantic application of the laboratory method "of 
Christianity on the foreign field; and, on the other hand, as due 
to the modifjang influence of certain great, growing convictions 
of the century. Out of the changed point of view, brought about 
in this double way, have grown the present-day conception of the 
need, attitude, and method in foreign missionary work. 

Prevailing Motive. 

I. And, first, it deserves emphasis that it is not possible to assert 
any absolute change in spirit and methods within the century, but 



164 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

only relative cpntrasts between the spirit and methods prevailing 
at the beginning and at the end of the century. One can hardly 
touch the inner spirit of the earliest men, from Samuel J. Mills 
on, and fail to see that one great motive, after all, has continu- 
ously prevailed. " The love of Christ constraineth us; because 
we thus judge, that one died for all, therefore all died; and he 
died for all, that they which live should no longer live unto them- 
selves, but unto him who for their sakes died and rose again. We 
are ambassadors therefore on behalf of Christ, as though God 
were entreating by us : we beseech you on behalf of Christ, be ye 
reconciled to God." The earliest missionary leaders were moved 
with Christ's own great compassion for the multitude, " because 
they were distressed and scattered, as sheep not having a shep- 
herd." This love for Christ, and this sharing in the love and 
compassion of Christ, are unmistakable throughout the century, 
though they inevitably express themselves, of course, in the 
current theological emphases of the time; and, therefore, for a 
considerable part of the century are voiced in the sense of the 
awful peril of the heathen of endless punishment in hell. Thus, 
as late as 1852, Secretary Pomeroy writes, " If the Christians 
of this land could stand together on some eminence near the gates 
of eternity and see the sweeping torrent of deathless souls from 
the realm of paganism daily and hourly passing through and 
plunging into the fathomless depths below, what eye would not 
run down with tears? " At the same time the yearning com- 
passion is plainly there, and the sense, too, of Christ as the one 
great, mighty deliverer. And it is love to him and sense of his 
love for men which inspires the compassion even so expressed. 
Hell claims a continuous and well-nigh engrossing attention for 
many years. But it would be a great misconception to suppose 
that this at any time shut out the greater motive, or that the 
emphasis on it was any other than a temporary mode of expres- 
sion for that greater motive which lay behind it. 

Broad Methods. 

Similarly as to methods. It is hardly possible to name any 
method totally unrepresented at the very beginning of missions. 
All of the present departments of work — evangelistic, educa- 
tional, industrial, medical, and publication — may be said to 
date back, in some form, to the very early days. 

For example, as early as 1817 the Ceylon missionaries were 



CHANGES IN MISSIONARY PRACTICE. 165 

undertaking somewhat definite medical work, and had succeeded 
in collecting from individuals on the field funds to build a 
hospital and to furnish it with some accommodation for the sick 
poor. 

The industrial side of missionary work Samuel J. Mills had very 
clearly in mind. And the industrial work was emphasized among 
the Indians, and was contemplated for the Hawaiians. 

And the changes in the educational work may be taken as some- 
what typical of all the changes in methods that have taken place. 
In India and Hawaii educational work was developed at the very 
beginning. 

Strong contrasts can be made here, but they are only relative. 
In fact, the middle of the century shows something of a reaction 
from the notably broad spirit of the instructions to the first 
missionaries. And the deputation to the missions in India in 
1854-55 took such action that some of the higher institutions in 
the Madura and Ceylon missions were much limited in their scope. 
On the recommendation of the deputation the schools were to be 
conducted in the vernacular, and only those who were in direct 
preparation for the ministry should be given any higher courses 
in connection with the mission. This was not only a reaction 
from the natural development of the Board's own work, but a 
repudiation of the very method, introduced in 1830 by Alexander 
Duff, which Eugene Stock believes made " a great epoch in India 
missions," " a new method to reach the higher classes and castes; 
gaining access to them by the offer of a good English education, 
and thus bringing them under the daily influence of Bible teaching 
and the personal touch of the missionary." The later educational 
emphasis, thus, is in part a return to earlier principles. 

One cannot go over, however, the report of this deputation of 
1854-55 without feeling the sincere desire on both sides to reach 
the right conclusion, nor without realizing the difficulty of the 
problem to be met. The question of the relation of means to ends 
must always remain a difficult one. For means, especially if in 
themselves very important, are, for that very reason, the more 
liable to take the place of ends. And this plainly was the fear 
of the deputation concerning the higher schools of learning. 

It should be noticed, too, that the theoretical grounds of the 
methods employed were probably much less clearly and con- 
sciously seen and acted on then than is now the case. It is not 
strange, therefore, that there should have been marked differences 



166 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

of opinion, especially l)etween those on the field and those at home. 
In the matter of education the Madura and Ceylon missions felt, 
at the time of the deputation, and have since felt, that the decision 
reached in view of the report of the deputation was a backward 
step. Secretary Anderson spoke of the decision as the result of 
'^ the pressure of experience." One of the missionaries retorted 
that, so far as they were concerned, it was rather '' the experience 
of a pressure." 

Though the Board has never in any formal way reversed its 
decision of that time, the timidity of the educational policy of the 
deputation may be set in broad contrast with the unhesitating 
breadth of the present-day policy, as voiced by Secretary Barton, 
in speaking of the higher educational institutions of the American 
Board: '' These colleges, in nine different countries and in twelve of 
the missions of the American Board, form the solid basis for the 
steady and permanent progress of the Christian work as well as 
for the elevation and civilization of the people among whom they 
are established. These institutions 

'' 1. Provide the men and women who are to be the direct 
evan^elizers of their own people. 

" 2. Train those who shall be educators and teachers in these 
countries and the constructors and directors of educational sys- 
tems. 

" 3. Train those who shall later become Christian lawyers and 
physicians. 

" 4. Train men who will occupy important places under 
the local government and so exert an influence in national 
affairs. 

" 5. Train men who will become creators of a national litera- 
ture. 

" 6. Train men who shall build up business enterprises in various 
lines. 

" 7. Furnish the entire Christian community with intelligent 
leaders in every walk of life, insuring wise management and safe 
organization. 

'' 8. Insure self-supporting, self-directing, and self-propagating 
native Christian institutions of all kinds and in all countries where 
we are carrying on work." 

But these broad, clear aims are in entire harmony with Dr. 
Worcester's instructions to the missionaries to Hawaii, given as 
early as 1827: " Consider the best modes of introducing educa- 



CHANGES IN MISSIONARY PRACTICE. 167 

tion among them, and of forming them into a reading, thinking, 
cultivated state of society, with all its schools and semiuaries, its 
aits and institutions.'' 

Similar comparison might be made as to other sides of the 
missionary work. Differences there are, but absolute contrasts 
can hardly be asserted. 

Applied Christian Principles. 

II. These changes, let me now ask you to observe, whether in 
spirit or method, have developed from the simple working out of 
the Christian principles. Christian missions were really a gigantic 
application of the laboratory method to Christianity. We have 
come very clearly to see, in our time, that no truth or principle is 
properly and thoroughly mastered until it has been wrought out 
in action. To see what a truth means, you must do it. Modern 
education believes that this principle holds even for mathematical 
and chemical truths. The principle must hold much more in the 
realm of the moral and spiritual. 

Now, the aim of Christian missions was to bring men to Christ. 
What does it mean to bring men to Christ? No man can fully tell 
till he works it out. There has been, therefore, steadily upon the 
mission field an inevitable reaction of the practice of missions 
upon the theory of missions. And mischief has always resulted 
where theory, formed away from the field, has been allowed to 
dominate missionary practice. The clearly and consciously 
enlarged and enriched conception of missions which belongs to 
the present day is not simply, perhaps not mainly, the result of 
changing theological or sociological convictions at home. It is 
the immediate result of the working out of the Christian idea on 
the mission field. Dr. Sidney L. Gulick is probably quite justified 
in saying: " It would be a mistake to suppose that foreign missions 
first took on sociological forms of work and international value 
only after, and because of, the rise of sociological conceptions of 
man. On the contrary, although foreign missions started from a 
frankly individualistic theory of religion and salvation, the actual 
work was from the start practical and sociological. It would be 
truer to say that Christian thought in regard to foreign missions 
has become sociological through observation of and reflection on 
what missions were actually doing than through the rise of socio- 
logical speculation along other lines of thought. Practice has 
always, preceded theory, as it always does in the large. It is 



168 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

probably safe to say that the sociological conception of the func- 
tion and value of foreign missions is more due to missionary 
experience than to the general sociological trend of modern 
science.'' 

In fact, the adoption of the different forms of missionary activity 
has been, as is very suggestively pointed out in a recent article in 
the Missionary Review of the World, an inevitable " evolution." 
First; there is the " evangelistic type," " the first type of mis- 
sionary work, first in time, first also in importance and in its right 
to dominate and shape the whole field of missionary operations." 
But the very success of the evangelistic type demands a second 
type of missionary work, the pastoral and supervisional. " As 
a certain experienced and devoted missionary once whimsically 
said, ' When you baptize your first convert, your troubles begin.' " 
But it is impossible to stop with the pastoral and supervisional. 
For in all this work " the missionary has a triune aim." He aims 
to make the native churches self-supporting, self-directing, and 
self-extending. " The missionary trains and fosters churches 
that he may make them evangelistic forces." That these churches 
now may be self-supporting, self-directing, and self-extending, all 
the other agencies of modern missions are really demanded, — 
educational, industrial, literary, medical. Educational, for the 
reasons already clearly set forth; industrial, both for the distinct 
educational value of industrial training, and for its imperative 
economic need in many fields, if the missionary churches are to be 
truly self-supporting and self-extending; literary, as a matter of 
course for any possible growth; medical, not only because medical 
missions are " the pioneers of evangelism," but even more because 
they are " permanent agencies of evangelism," especially in help- 
ing the people " to realize that the spirit of Christianity is love." 
In the words of our article, " all these types of work flow out of 
evangelism. They also flow back into evangelism. As a matter 
of fact, the direct evangelistic work is greater in amount and better 
in quality because of the work of oversight, of education, the 
literary, the medical, and the industrial work. They are all 
justified by evangelism, the source from which they spring, the 
end to which they tend." 

The inevitableness, in the evolution of missions^ of every other 
broad change that has taken place in the field within the century 
may be similarly argued. The much larger employment of women, 
for example, obtaining from 1868 on, was a necessity if a very 



CHANGES IN MISSIONARY PRACTICE. 169 

large part of the field — women and children — were not to be 
left almost unevangelized. The greater centralization of work now 
prevailing was demanded, if the educational work were to be done 
most economically and effectively, and due recognition were to be 
given to the discovery of the second quarter of the century that 
'' the native Christians are the best evangelists to their heathen 
fellow-countrymen." In the same way the changing attitude 
toward the ethnic faiths, seen in the deliberate seeking of points 
of contact with them, was a pedagogical necessity for a successful 
evangelism. From every direction, the conviction was steadily 
pressed home upon the missionary evangelist that the only way 
of winning a man to Christ was to win the whole man, not some 
abstract fraction of a man. It is a far cry from the not solitary 
conception of the little girl, mentioned by Dr. Leonard, who 
defined a missionary to be '' a man standing under a tree and 
reading the Bible to everybody who passed by." 

This evolutionary conception of missions seems to me to illus- 
trate admirably the laboratory method as applied to Christianity. 
We do not really see all that it means to bring men to Christ until 
we have entered thoroughly and honestly upon the attempt. 
When we have made the attempt in dead earnest, the present 
richly complex conception of missions is compelled. 

Wundt's famous principle of the '^ heterogeny of ends" — that, 
in the eternal pursuit of any end, new ends and motives are seen 
to arise — has no finer illustration anywhere than in the develop- 
ing missionary activity, in which great ends have multiplied, to be 
made subordinate only to the one great original and supreme end. 

It is worth noting that, in consequence of this constant pressure 
of the laboratory method, our leading missionaries have often 
been in advance, religiously and theologically, of home thought 
and sentiment. The working out of the Christian ideals in the 
laboratory of experience, has forced them to lay aside certain 
theories and preconceptions, and to modify certain methods. 
The leaders among them have thus shown an appreciation of the 
complexity of the problem, of the needed social emphasis, and of 
the inevitableness of greater denominational unity, as well as of 
the conception of the true relation to the non-Christian religions, 
that has been rarely matched at home. The inevitable logic of 
the constraining love of Christ has wrought from the beginning 
more largely and richly than ecclesiastical or theological dogmas 
could suggest. 



170 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 



Certain Growing Convictions. 

III. But while the very working out of the Christian motive 
on the missionary field has inevitably affected missionary theory 
and practice, it is also true that there have been, through the 
century, certain great, growing convictions affecting the minds of all 
thoughtful men, that have, in their turn, tended to modify 
missionary theory and practice, and for the most part in the very 
ways which the laboratory method in the field had suggested. 

The limits of this paper plainly forbid even a summary state- 
ment of the development of thought during the century. But it 
may be indicated, at least, that missionary theory and practice 
have been inevitably affected by certain great, growing emphases 
coming from theology, from natural science, from psychology, 
sociology, and comparative religion. 

In theology, two great convictions have been increasingly domi- 
nant: the conviction of the practical lordship of Christ within the 
Bible and without, and the conviction of the fatherhood of God. 
In other words, even where there has not been clear consciousness 
of it, theology seems to have been recognizing more and more with 
Fairbairn that theology must be '^ as regards source, Christ o- 
centric, but as regards object and matter, theocentric; in other 
words, while Christ determines the conception of God, the con- 
ception determines the theology." And Christ conceives God 
fundamentally as father. And this conception must be held to 
be determining in its effect upon every other theological doctrine. 

It is these dominating convictions of the lordship of Christ and 
the fatherhood of God that, I suppose, have made it impossible 
for us to give exactly the same place in our thought to hell that 
the earlier secretaries and missionaries gave to it. It is not that 
fatherhood has been conceived as mere good nature, and it is not 
that there is any diminution of the conviction that no man can 
sow to the flesh and reap life, but some larger hope seemed neces- 
sary, if the unrelieved blackness of the earlier pictures were not to 
break down altogether our faith in God as father, and so take 
away the very sense of good news, out of which springs all mis- 
sionary activity. 

With this conception of the fatherhood of God, too, sin has not 
become less, but more terrible. For, in the words of another, 
" the judge does not fear crime, as the father fears the very taint 
of vice." '' And so, even within Christendom, sin is never so 



CHANGES IN MISSIONARY PRACTICE. 171 

little feared, as when hell most dominates the imagination; it 
needs to be looked at as it affects God, to be understood and 
feared." We have come to think more, thus, of the moral need 
of the sinner, and his personal alienation from God, than of 
hell conceived as a kind of external punishment. And we have 
feared the sin more than any external penalty. 

And, in the same way, this double conviction of the lordship 
of Christ, and the consequent sense of God as father, has made it 
impossible for us to treat the Scripture as all on a level, equally 
important and equally authoritative. We should probably none 
of us now think that the earlier chapters of Genesis were to be 
among the very first parts of the Bible to be translated into the 
vernacular. And, in general, we may hope that salvation means 
much less than formerly the acceptance of a system of doctrine. 
We should certainly hardly expect a modern mission voluntarily 
to propose to another the Westminster Confession of Faith, with 
a few modifications, as its chosen basis for union. 

Side by side with these theological convictions, there have been 
at work the great scientific conceptions of the universality of law 
and of the theory of evolution. These ideas remain still far too 
much, for most thinkers, simple abstractions, thought of as able 
to do something in and of themselves. Most men have not made 
sufficiently clear to themselves just how law and evolution can 
be conceived as realities. The consequences of these great scien- 
tific ideas for religion and theology have been only partly drawn, 
and where drawn the emphasis has often been placed at the wrong 
point. But even so, with other influences, they have tended, no 
doubt, both at home and abroad, to restore Christianity's latent 
belief in the immanent God, to change the emphasis from the 
miraculous to the ethical and spiritual, to bring into greater 
prominence the thought of a normal and hopeful growth in the 
religious life, and of the prevalence of law in the moral and spiritual 
world, and to make it inevitable that we should think of the other 
religions as having some place in the natural religious develop- 
ment of the race. And they have brought, as well, in harmony 
with Christ's O'.' n parables of the leaven and of the mustard seed, 
some larger hope of a continuous development, both here and 
hereafter. 

But still more directly than by science have missionary theory 
and practice been influenced by the development of modern 
psycholog}', sociology, and comparative religion. These great 



172 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

departments of study all belong, in the modern sense, to quite 
recent years, and every one of them has close connections with the 
missionary work. 

Psychology's four great convictions of the complexity of life, 
of the unity of man, of the central importance of will and action, 
and of the preeminence of the personal, are all reflected in modern 
missionary theory and practice. These show, in the first place, 
as we have seen, a much clearer sense than the earlier missionary 
days showed of the inescapable complexity of the missionary 
problem. They show, in the many-sided recognition of the needs 
of man, the sense of his unity; that training anywhere is training 
everywhere, and that neglect anywhere affects all, while the 
industrial missions, and the increasing calling out everywhere of 
the activity and initiative of the evangelized peoples themselves, 
are all in line with the present '' voluntaristic trend " in psychol- 
ogy. And the whole history of missions is a splendid illustration 
of the matchless contagion of the leaven of personal association 
reverently carried out. One may even wonder if the finest thing 
in the exceptionally successful Barrows Lectures of President 
Charles Cuthbert Hall is not to be found in the spirit of them, 
indicated in the dedication, '^ In the spirit of brotherhood, and 
with true respect for the various faiths of men." 

And the sociological emphasis at home has doubtless interacted 
with the increasingly social practice of the missions abroad. In 
the modern organically unified world, when one has begun to say 
at home, " We are members one of another," he must end in 
foreign missions, and of the broadest type. The sociologist who 
is not a foreign missionary, at least in spirit, denies himself. 
Comparative religion has had its marked contribution to make 
to the resources and to the spirit of missionary endeavor. 

IV. The influence of the laboratory practice abroad and of 
changing convictions at home have thus together brought us to 
the present-day conception of need, attitude, and method in foreign 
missionary service. 

The Need. 

And, first, as to need. So far as hesitancy in the foreign mis- 
sionary enterprise is religious at all, and does not merely grow out 
of disbelief in the real value of religion, or of the spiritual, it 
probably roots most of all in a sound instinct going back to 



CHANGES IN MISSIONAKY PRACTICE. 173 

Christian feeling, and to a modern psychological and sociological 
point of view. For all these lead to a newly awakened genuine 
respect for the significance of the ideals of others. There is no 
question that we do need carefully to guard ourselves at this 
point. There is, as Professor James has so admirably insisted, '^ a 
certain blindness in human beings " which makes it hard for us 
to enter into the feelings and ideals of others. Recognizing, now, 
the full weight of these modern convictions and ideals, where, 
still, lies the need for the Christian of carrying the gospel to non- 
Christian nations? What is the great motive? It certainly does 
not lie in the mere thought of hell, however keen one's perception 
of the certainty of retribution; nor in the thought of the command 
even of Christ regarded as external, however high the lordship 
ascribed to him; nor yet in the thought of a prescribed task of 
witnessing as a formal condition to be fulfilled for the coming of 
the Lord, however clear one's expectation at this point may be. 
Equally certain is it that the motive does not lie in a supercilious 
attitude taken toward other peoples and their values and ideals; 
nor in the denial of their present and later possible contribution to 
the understanding and interpretation of Christianity. We must 
recognize, and modern missionary theory and practice are increas- 
ingly recognizing, that these other peoples must have their own 
opportunity for practical and theoretical interpretation of Chris- 
tianity, and that they have their own large contribution to make 
to the world's understanding of its greatest faith. It is quite 
possible that the Indian or Japanese interpretation of Christianity 
may have as large a contribution as the American or the German. 

But even so, when one takes into account the growing unity of 
the world, the steadily increasing intimacy of the relations of part 
to part, he must see that we cannot avoid influencing these other 
peoples if we would. The only question is whether the influence 
shall be that of our best; whether unselfish interests shall keep 
pace with the selfish in their influence upon the rest of the world. 
For we do send these other influences. The whole machinery of 
government, even, is behind our commercial advances, even when 
this commerce is of things that bring harm rather than good. We 
are giving our worst. We owe doubly our best. 

The absolute disparity of numbers of missionaries, too, com- 
pared with those to whom they minister, makes it impossible 
that there should be any real domination of the ideals of the one 
people by the few representatives of the other. These insignifi- 



174 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

cant numbers can make progress with their faith at all only as 
its appeal really reaches the minds and hearts of those to whom 
they speak. These choose, they are not dominated. Even more 
than at home is this the case. The sole principle is that of the 
contagion of the little righteous leaven, the contagion of the sons 
of the kingdom. 

The need of our carrying the gospel to non-Christian nations, 
therefore, lies first of all in our own moral need of sharing our 
best, and not merely our worst. Is our need at home oppressively 
great? ' Are we '^ dazzled by a too near look at material things? " 
All the more we need to remember: " Man grows by greatness of 
his purposes." And great world-wide ambitions are yet going to 
be in evidence just here among our men of wealth. They will 
help to bring nations to their birth. For our own life's sake, we 
must be foreign missionaries. It is simply a question of the 
highest unselfishness, from which nothing can excuse us. It is 
only the desire, with full respect and reverence, to share our best 
with all peoples. 

Moreover, the Christian knows the imperative need of a spiritual 
basis for any large life, or any enduring civilization. He is quite 
ready to say, with one of the most modern secular editors in a 
very modern magazine: " And the chief est proof of Christ's 
divinity is not in the miracles, nor in the signs and wonders, but 
in the fact that he knew that the gearing of the world is not turned 
toward the millennium by money or by the power that comes 
through wordly success, but by service of man to man, without 
money, and without the power that money can buy." '' And 
by its success or failure as a soul-maker must our civilization stand 
in divine judgment, and we, the full partners in this civilization, 
must stand for it." And, one may add, if we are so to believe in 
our civilization, we must believe in the infinite and eternal pur- 
poses back of all this striving of ours, that may make conceivable 
for us great rational hopes, and may make our lives significant. 
Ultimately, deep meaning cannot be given to life without a faith 
essentially religious. 

Believing, then, in the imperative need of a spiritual basis for 
life, believing in the inevitableness of unselfish service, and 
believing that we have that needed spiritual basis for highest 
living in our Christian faith, we can do no other than proclaim it. 
Ultimately, that is, back of all foreign missionary endeavor, lies 
the conviction that in the good news of Christ we have the supreme 



CHANGES IN MISSIONARY PRACTICE. 175 

good to share with all men. The final missionary motive is, thus, 
simply the sense of good news — the conviction that the source 
of our own best and highest life is in Christ; that he, simply by 
what he is, has made it possible for us to believe in God as father 
and in men as our brothers, and in the eternal life as a reasonable 
hope; that in him we find the key to man, the key to God, and 
the key to life, " for the secret of man,'' said the old schoolman, 
'' is the secret of Messiah"; that to the questions of man, as an 
incurably religious being, Christ alone gives completely satisfying 
answers. We moderns of the moderns must still in all honesty 
say: " We live by him, and he must be glad tidings for all men 
in just the proportion he is our glad tidings. We can never 
justify ourselves before our own moral judgment while we refuse 
to men the knowledge of him. He alone is earth's priceless fact. 
And just here lies, thus, for the most modern man, with clear 
vision of the most modern convictions and ideals, the undying 
motive of foreign missionary enterprise. This is our need of 
carrying the gospel to the non-Christian nations. 

Our Attitude. 

And as respects the attitude to he taken toward non-Christian 
religions, the best present-day missionary, as I understand it, is 
glad, even anxious, to recognize every element of truth in the 
ethnic faiths. His faith in the fatherhood of God, not less than 
a belief in an evolutionary theory, leads him to look for such ele- 
ments of truth. To these he cannot be blind, but he will rather 
have for them the discerning insight of love to God and belief 
in his love, and of love to man. His attitude toward them is 
thus the very reverse of a hard and unsympathetic one, for he 
must wish to believe that .God has not left himself without witness 
among any people; and he cannot forget that man is an essentially 
religious being. He sees evidences of at least partial divine 
inspiration, and of imperfect seeking and groping after God, 
gleams of light that are to be understood and rightly valued only 
in the full light of Christianity. He recognizes his liability to 
misinterpret notions that, originally noble, may have been 
gradually pulled down to a lower plane, like the mystery of life, 
which plays so large a part in many religions. And yet he does 
not allow himself to be blind to the real facts. He understands 
that metaphysics, however acute, are not in themselves a religious 
contribution. And he distinguishes between the original sacred 



176 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

books and the lower popular forms that the religion of the books 
has taken. And he recognizes, as he must, their often very meager 
moral results, and even that of none of them, except Judaism, can 
it be said that they are essentially ethical. As one seeking to win 
those of another faith, however, he feels the imperative need to 
seek every possible point of contact; and, therefore, he cannot 
undervalue the revelation of the best in the national mind con- 
tained in their religions. He recognizes, too, that the great 
apologists in the case of any people cannot be the missionaries, 
but must come ultimately from the non-Christian peoples them- 
selves, who can alone have a sure instinct for that which is most 
sacred and appeals most deeply to their people. And at every 
point in this attitude toward the non-Christian religions the 
conduct of the truly modern missionary is increasingly dominated 
by a sincere reverence for the liberty, for the person, for the ideals 
of the man he seeks to win. 

The Methods. 

And this spirit preeminently is intended to pervade, finally, 
all the methods which the modern missionary must apply, whether 
evangelistic, pastoral and supervisional, educational, literary, 
medical, or industrial. The policy of centralization means to 
guard sacredly the moral initiative and manhood of the convert. 
The native churches are called out at every point. The much 
larger employment of women makes more certain Christ's emanci- 
pation of both the child and of woman. Interdenominational, 
yes, and international, cooperation are already at work on the 
foreign field, almost beyond our fondest hopes for the home 
churches. The strategic increasing enlistment of the young people 
and the growing power of the Missionary Volunteer Movement 
mean the giving of a worthy outlet for the dynamic of youthful, 
self-forgetful enthusiasm in the world's greatest enterprise. 
Here is ^' adolescence " indeed. The insistence upon mission 
study, upon pastoral responsibility, upon the policy of direct 
support of missionaries by individuals and churches, and upon a 
careful apportionment plan, is sure to bring home to each Chris- 
tian the intelligent conviction of his own share in this great work, 
and to help him to see that foreign missions is no side issue, no 
mere addendum, but of the very essence of Christianity. 

"For the love of Christ coristraineth us." 



MEMORIAL OF ARMENIAN EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE. 177 



MEMORIAL OF THE ARMENIAN EVANGELICAL ALLI- 
ANCE OF AMERICA TO THE DIRECTORS AND 
MEMBERS OF THE AMERICAN BOARD. 

Presented by Rev. G. M. Manavian, 
The Moderator of the Alliance. 

Sirs, The Armenian evangelical alliance of America sends its 
greetings and congratulations to the American Board which is 
celebrating the centenary of its organization. Your society has 
sent the gospel of hope and life to the nations of the world 
through a century of marked success. 

We, the evangelical Armenians of America, as the children of a 
historic Christian nation, have received most gratefully the noble 
services of your great society. Your heroic and self-sacrificing 
representatives, in their efforts to Christianize the Turkish empire, 
have improved their opportunities by presenting to the Arme- 
nians the grandeur and the inspiring poAver of the simple gospel of 
our" Lord Jesus Christ for the world's redemption. 

Greater than the organization of evangelical churches among 
the Armenians have been the fruits of the services of the mission- 
aries of the American Board. We owe them the new zeal for the 
search of Christian truth in the spirit of the nineteenth and 
twentieth centuries, and w^e have realized through their work, to 
a greater extent, our conception of personal faith and religion. 
We owe them the inspiration and earnest hope and desire for an 
evangelical service among the neighboring races. God has pre- 
served the Armenian nation through many centuries of persecu- 
tion and martyrdom. Your missionaries have been helping that 
nation to become a power in God's hand for the coming and estab- 
lishment of his kingdom on earth. 

Before the coming of the missionaries of the American Board 
into the Turkish empire, the Armenians were in touch only with 
the ideas and civilization of the Latin nations of Europe. These 
had long established their ecclesiastical and educational institu- 
tions among the Armenians. Their influence was great and 
growing until the coming of your missionaries put the Armenians 
in touch with the evangelical Anglo-Saxon races of the world. 
The educational and ecclesiastical institutions established and 



178 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

sustained by the American Board through its representatives have 
been a substitute for, or have counteracted the influences of, the 
Latin civihzation. This is appreciated by those who are enter- 
taining great hopes for the Armenian race. 

We are indebted to your society for the introduction of higher 
education for men and women. Robert College, Euphrates 
College, Central Turkey College, Anatolia College, and their 
affiliated high schools and primary schools, have proved the 
wisdom of the founders of those institutions. Their memories 
are kept sacred among the Armenians, and their services more 
and more appreciated by the Armenians of all classes and faiths. 

In the hours of great calamities and national disasters, as during 
the great massacres in the nineties of the last century, your noble 
missionaries stood by the Armenians, comforted them and dis- 
pensed relief to them, and when the time had come to reorganize 
the educational and ecclesiastical work, so ruthlessly destroyed, 
they gave their unselfish support. The Armenians have become 
a part of the brotherhood of humanity through such services, 
which your missionaries have rendered in the past and are render- 
ing today. Such considerations have made us grateful to your 
century-old society, for which we feel the highest esteem. 

God bless the American Board, to continue its benevolent 
activities throughout the world and to contribute to the greater 
spiritual and intellectual regeneration of the Armenian race, 
destined, we believe, to become a power in God's hand for the 
evangelization of the great empires in which the Armenians are 
now living as a subject nation. 

Submitted most gratefully, in behalf of the Armenian evangelical 
alliance of America. 

(Signed) G. M. MANAVIAN, Moderator. 
V. BABASINIAN, Secretary. 



THE MESSAGE OF THE HAYSTACK MEN. 179 



THE MESSAGE OF THE HAYSTACK MEN TO THE 
CHURCH OF TODAY. 

Rev. Henry Evertson Cobb, D.D., 
Pastor of the Collegiate Church, New York. 

We are here instinctively to receive such a message. The 
inspiration of that prayer meeting under the haystack is still with 
the church. In the first year of my ministry, I was an attendant 
at the general synod of the church which I have the honor to 
represent. I shall never forget the impassioned appeal made by 
Professor Lansing, of the seminary at New Brunswick, in behalf 
of the Mohammedans among whom he had been born, an appeal 
resulting in the founding of the Arabian mission, the history of 
which you all know. Two young men had presented themselves 
to be sent out to that desolate and neglected field, Samuel Zwemer 
and Peter Cantine. In introducing them. Professor Lansing 
referred to the consecrated men of this college who met in prayer 
for the neglected heathen world a hundred years ago. Their 
prayers, he felt, awaited this answer. So it was the Haystack 
Prayer Meeting, you see, that led to the occupying of one of our 
latest and most glorious mission fields — as it did, of course, to 
those older fields occupied while our mission board and yours were 
one. The fervor of that prayer meeting still throbs in the warm 
heart of missions. As an incident in Christian experience, what a 
little thing it seemed then to be! As a power in the history of the 
church, what a mighty thing it has become! 

Forgotten Essentials. 

The Haystack Prayer Meeting lives in order to recall the church 
to a forgotten essential, the supreme purpose of her organization. 
This is what those young men recognized in their spiritual exalta- 
tion, and the vision which they saw on the mountain top of prayer 
they went out to impart to the churches. The single supreme 
mission for which the church was organized, and for which she 
exists, is to preach the gospel to every creature. There are no 
geographical, racial, or social boundaries limiting her scope of 
activity or narrowing her responsibility. He who was lifted upon 



180 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

the cross looked past Jerusalem, beyond the boundary of Judea, 
across Samaria, to the uttermost parts of the earth, and the last 
soul dwelling in that uttermost bourne he left as a legacy to the 
loving care of those whom he called to take up his work. It is 
the most amazing thing that the church should still be so dull 
and unresponsive to the tremendous urgency of the last earthly 
word of her risen Lord, that she should have read her Bible all 
these years without perceiving that from the beginning to the end 
of her infallible rule of faith and practice, the idea of stewardship, 
of apostleship, is emphasized. 

The other day, in reading the Epistle to the Romans, I was 
impressed with the significant change the revised version makes 
in the rendering of the passage in which St. Paul asks the question: 
^' What advantage then hath the Jew? " and this is his answer: 
"Much every way; first of all, that they were intrusted with the 
oracles of God.'' The possession of the Scriptures was a sacred 
trust to the Jews. They did not hold them for themselves, but 
in fulfillment of the promise to Abraham, ''In thee shall all the 
families of the earth be blessed." Are we not heirs with them 
of the promises to Abraham? Has not Israel's responsibility 
descended upon us along with Israel's privilege? We too hold 
the Scriptures, not merely as a precious possession, a means of 
light, and blessing for ourselves, but as a trust for the whole 
world. 

Now it must be acknowledged by those of us who have the best 
opportunity to know the sentiment of the churches toward foreign 
missions, that the church has not yet come to the place where she 
realizes the extent of her responsibility toward the heathen world, 
or accepts without question this view of her mission. Every pastor 
can count on his fingers the men in his church who have the cause 
at heart. Even those upon whom he depends for counsel and 
encouragement, his church officers, his devoted laymen, his Sun- 
day-school teachers, are often unresponsive, skeptical, or antago- 
nistic to the conception that this lost heathen world has at 
least as great a claim upon the interest and prayers and devoted 
effort of the church as the community at its door, or perhaps a 
greater claim. Aye, how many of us who are pastors of churches, 
however we may feel the constraint of that vast world of human 
need, still regard the missionary activities of our churches as a 
mere incident in their work rather than as essential to their very 
existence, a side issue rather than a supreme motive, and content 



THE MESSAGE OF THE HAYSTACK MEN. 181 

ourselves with a passing reference to it in our prayers, an occasional 
missionary sermon, an annual collection. 

Surely there is a place today for the impassioned missionary 
fervor of a Samuel J. Mills to recall the church to her God- 
appointed mission, overlaid as it has been by so many lesser 
claims, forgotten in the press of so many minor demands upon her 
time and money and prayer. For the church, in order to attain 
the high purpose of her Lord and Master when he called her into 
being, cannot subordinate this work; she may not delegate her 
missionary activity to a small committee. It must be a corporate 
activity, not an activity confined to individuals here and there. 
A missionary enthusiasm must infuse and permeate the whole 
body of men and women who bear the name of Christ. Oh, I 
think that Christ must look upon that little band of women in 
our churches, whose hearts he has opened to receive the gospel, 
and who meet to pray and plan for the extension of his kingdom 
— perhaps the only active missionary organization in many of 
our churches, and he says, '* Here is my true church; here is the 
only society that is one with me in my purpose for the lost world." 
Nay, I wonder if the church will ever realize his ideal for her, 
until there shall be found, as it is found in the Moravian church, 
the great body of its apostles in the mission field, the small, faith- 
ful band at home working and praying with one heart and mind 
for those who have the supreme privilege of being at the forefront 
of battle. For the only church which can lay claim to apostolic 
succession is that in which the apostolic spirit mightily prevails. 

Confidence and Consecration. 

Another message from these young men of the haystack to the 
churches today is that the church must be imbued with absolute 
faith in the perfect feasibility of her commission and in its com- 
plete and speedy triumph. '' We can do it if we will," said 
Samuel Mills. This faith must stand solidly on the fact that our 
Lord Jesus Christ is the author and finisher of it. "Deus vult," 
God wills it, was the motto the Crusader wrote upon his banner. 
It was pure loyalty to the will of God that inspired these first 
missionaries, the faith that he who gave the command, '' Go ye 
into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature," would 
certainly fulfill the promise he attached to obedience, " Lo, I am 
with you alway, even unto the end of the world." 



182 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

And today, as we review this first century of Anierican missions, 
we have abundant evidence of our Lord's faithfulness to his 
promise. The Lord has worked with these apostles of his church. 
His presence has been the living power in all their work. It is 
his hand that has manifestly opened the fast-closed doors, and 
broken down the high walls of opposition, until there is not one 
race or tribe or living soul today that is not accessible to the 
Christian missionary. His spirit has wrought in men of darkest 
races a type of Christian character which challenges comparison 
with any in England and America. His gospel has proved itself 
in experience to be the gospel for the world. What abundant 
confidence the triumphs of the gospel give us today for the com- 
plete and speedy coming of Christ's kingdom in the whole world. 
'^ We can do it if we will " may well be the rallying cry of the 
church as it begins this new century of missionary enterprise. I 
have seen it stated authoritatively that at the present rate of 
progress the world will be practically Christian, as much as 
America is today, in fifty years, and that if the church would give 
money and men as we might, in twenty-five years India and 
China and Africa would be aglow with Christian light. If this 
be so, it is possible that the middle-aged man here today will see 
the world converted to Christ before he dies. This much is cer- 
tain, my brothers, " We can do it if we will." 

But to this end there is needed as never before in the history of 
missions, not simply a larger outpouring of money on the part of 
the home churches, but a consecration of the best men in our 
churches to the actual work. When, as the outcome of that Hay- 
stack Prayer Meeting, a secret society was formed, to include in 
its membership men of the highest endowment for the foreign field, 
it was recognized that the difficulties of the work were so great that 
only men of the highest consecration and finest equipment were 
to be called to it. One of the men enrolled in that organization, 
after it was extended to Andover Seminary, was Adoniram Judson, 
of whom Sir Henry Mortimer Durand said at the Nashville con- 
ference that he was " a man of unconquerable spirit, entirely free 
from selfishness and from all the meaner passions, and withal a 
man of so great ability and such profound acquaintance with the 
Burmese character as to have been of priceless assistance to the 
British government in its diplomatic dealings between the two 
nations, — a man as greatly honored and beloved by the British 
soldier as he was by the Burmese people." 



THE MESSAGE OF THE HAYSTACK MEN. 183 

Such men are needed today as never in the past history of 
missions. There is a place for them such as never existed until 
this time, when China, Japan, Siam, and other Eastern govern- 
ments are recognizing how much Christianity has had to do with 
the superiority of Western civilizaton and are coveting the secret 
for themselves. Our boards are aware of the critical character of 
this stage in the history of missions and meeting it in a more care- 
ful selection of the men whom they send out. We must have the 
best men, men able to stand before kings, men who shall be wise 
and tactful in their dealing with those governments which are 
taking an increasing interest in their work and are weighing its 
motives and its worth with a new seriousness. And so the foreign 
field presses its attention upon the best men of our colleges and 
seminaries. It promises a place of the greatest usefulness and 
power to the physician, the teacher, the administrator, the man 
of statesmanlike insight and balance and judgment. There is no 
place where a man can be of greater usefulness to his fellow-men, 
where his life will count for more, where his work will count for so 
much in the history of the world's progress as in the foreign mission 
field today. Think of what Dr. Verbeck did for Japan. 

A few weeks ago I was talking with a friend of mine who has 
been forced to give up the presidency of a missionary college in 
India and return to this country. While in India he was made 
the mayor of the city in which his college is situated, and a few 
years ago he received the Kaiser-I-Hind medal (one of the two 
granted that year) for distinguished service to the government 
and people of India. He was called, on his return, to an impor- 
tant chair in one of our historic colleges. But he said to me, 
" There is no comparison between the scope and outlook of edu- 
cational work in India and that in this country. There the horizon 
is boundless, the results incalculable." Men of the colleges, this 
work calls for the best of j^ou; you can find no place where you 
may invest your talent with such marvelous returns. Men of 
brain and energy and genius, the work wants you to put your 
best in all humilit}^ and unselfishness and loyalty at the service of 
Christ. 

Need of Prayer. 

There is one word more in this message from the young men 
whose memory calls us here today. It is the reminder that the 
work of foreign missions began in prayer and that it can only live 



184 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

by prayer. It calls the churches, pastors, and people to renewed 
and earnest prayer for the speedy coming of Christ's kingdom on 
earth. All machinery is as nothing without this, — the spread of 
missionary information, the securing of endowment, the labors 
of our secretaries. Our forces upon the field are crippled unless 
behind them are the prayers of a united church. ^' Brethren, 
pray for us," was the impassioned appeal of the great missionary 
St. Paul to the church, and it is the one fervent appeal of our 
missionaries upon the foreign field today — an appealfor organized 
intercession in their behalf. I once heard the pastor of a church, 
pausing abruptly in his prayer, say, '^ And now, Lord, we make 
our supplication for those for whom there are so few to pray," 
and then went on to pray, not for the friendless or the outcast in 
his great city, but for the missionaries. What a wrong we do them 
when we send them out to the forefront of the battle and leave 
them unsupported by the spiritual forces which alone can bring 
them victory. God forgive our neglect of this strongest weapon 
he has put into our hands for the redemption of the world. We 
need, my brethren, to rise to the higher conception of prayer, to 
regard it not as a means of changing the ways of God, but as a 
means of helping us understand the purpose of God and fulfilling 
it. For as we see eye to eye with God, and the vision comes to us 
of his love for men, and the awful price paid on Calvary for the 
redemption of men, you and I must recognize how little we have 
been doing to realize his purpose and what infinitely greater things 
it is possible for us to do. 

In one of his addresses, Dr. Robertson Nicoll recalls the state- 
ment of Professor Guyot that there are three periods in the life 
of every plant, one very slow, another much more rapid, and the 
next of a whirling rapidity. 

First is growth by the root, obscure, hidden, and very slow. 
Then is growth by the stem, much faster. Last is growth by the 
flower and the fruit, which rushes. The work of world evangeli- 
zation has grown by the root. The long periods of delay are past. 
It is now growing by the stem, and making haste. We are on the 
eve of that last period, when it shall blossom and bring forth fruit 
to the glory of God and the joy of man. God speed it in his day. 
Let us say with Henry Martyn, '^ I have hitherto lived to little 
purpose, more like a clod than a servant of Christ; now let me 
burn out for God." 



THE KIXD OF YOUNG MEN AND WOMEN NEEDED. 185 



THE KIND OF YOUNG MEN AND WOMEN NEEDED FOR 
THE MISSION FIELD. 

Rev. Francis E. Clark, D.D., 
President of the United Society of Christian Endeavor. 

The call for young men and women who shall give themselves 
to the upbuilding of the kingdom of God in all the world was never 
louder or more imperative than it is today. It will never grow less 
insistent, until the kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms 
of our Lord and of his Christ. 

But while the call is loud and persistent, it is not extended to 
all. The self-indulgent are not wanted. There is no place for the 
merely romantic novelty seeker. Those who have only intel- 
lectual aspirations and who chiefly wish to enlarge their mental 
horizon, or that of those to whom they are sent, are not needed. 
There is a great field for the educational missionary, but not 
for the merely educational missionary who cares for nothing but 
education. The man who has no gospel but the gospel of good 
works, no message but that of the gradual evolution of the race, 
no divinity to inspire him but the divinity of human nature, would 
much better stay at home. 

But for those with the highest intellectual and social gifts, who, 
at the same time, love the Lord their God with all their mind and 
soul and strength and their neighbors as themselves, who are 
self-sacrificing and courageous, who count not their lives dear 
unto them, who are willing to lose their lives that they may find 
them again, there is no such attractive and rewarding work today 
as that found on the foreign mission field. 

Are these high and hard requirements? They are no higher 
and harder than our Lord himself laid down for all his disciples, 
for he commanded them to put his cause and his work before 
father and mother, and house and lands, yea, and their own lives 
also. No church that does not present this supreme motive, that 
does not appeal to this heroic element, will ever secure the right 
missionaries or will ever imbue its 3'oung people with the mission- 
ary spirit. 

Thank God, this is the appeal that the American Board has 
made, from the day that Samuel J. Mills and his companions met 



186 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

under the haystack at Williamstown to the present day. How 
nobly have the young people of our constituency responded to 
this heroic note! Let Horace Pitkin and Mary Morrill, of Pao Ting 
Fu tell, and the scores of brave men and women, of whom the 
world was not worthy. 

" They gained the steep ascent of heaven 
Thro' peril, toil and pain; 
God, to us may grace be given 
To follow in their train." 

The young man or woman whom the missionary cause needs 
today must also be gifted with an unconquerable optimism, born 
of belief in the conquering principles and life of Christ. Does the 
conversion of the heathen world look hopeless? There is no such 
word in the true missionary's vocabulary. From a human stand- 
point it was far more hopeless a hundred years ago when those 
young men of Williamstown met to pray for it. But their 
optimism was born of a conquering faith that believed, beyond 
a peradventure, that He whose right it was should reign, and that 
at last every nation and kindred and people and tongue should 
ascribe honor to Him that sitteth upon the throne and to the 
Lamb forever and ever. 



VISION OF THE HAYSTACK REALIZED. 187 



THE VISION OF THE HAYSTACK REALIZED. 

Mr. John R. Mott, 

Chairman of. the Executive Committee of the Student Volunteer 

Movement, and General Secretary of the World's Student 

Christian Federation. 

I HAVE been asked to speak upon '' The Vision of the 
Haystack Band ReaHzed by Students of this Generation." 
What was the vision of the Haystack Band? Without doubt, 
that vision included an intercollegiate naissionary movement. 
The little band of men at Williams not only built up a most effi- 
cient Christian society known as the '' Society of Brethren '' in 
Williams College, but they also, from almost the beginning, had 
the idea of stimulating the formation of similar societies in other 
colleges of the New England and Middle Atlantic states. They 
bestirred themselves to accomplish this desired end. They insti- 
tuted correspondence with different colleges. They made visits 
to some of the colleges. Some of us have read about the visit 
a deputation made to Union College in New York state. They 
did more than that to realize their vision. Two of the men at least 
left Williams College and spent the better part of a year at other 
colleges, one going to Middlebury and another to Yale. As a 
result of the employment of these and other methods, their 
example and their earnest advocacy led to the formation of 
missionary or Christian societies in a few other colleges, — just 
how many no one knows exactly. Not only did they lead to the 
forming of a few comparatively weak student organizations, but 
they also did much to kindle missionary fires in the lives of the 
students with whom they came in contact. 

After one has said this he has indicated — in bare outline at 
least — all that they were able in those days to accomplish, in 
the way of realizing the vision of an intercollegiate missionary 
movement. Why was it in those days they could not accomplish 
more? Remember that the number of colleges then was small; 
that the colleges then were isolated; that the means of communi- 
cation were very poor compared with what we have in these days. 
Keep in mind that in those days they had nothing corresponding 
to what we call the intercollegiate consciousness as manifested 



188 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

in intercollegiate athletic sports, in intercollegiate fraternities, 
and debates and oratorical contests between the colleges. More- 
over, the state of spiritual life was low in the colleges at the begin- 
ning of the nineteenth century, and student life was not highly 
organized even in individual colleges. When these facts are kept 
in view it is nothing less than wonderful that that band of con- 
secrated men achieved what they did. But they fell far short of 
realizing their own vision, if we may trust what we read in their 
letters as to their desires. 

Students' Organizations. 

It has been left to the students of the present generation to 
realize their vision. The students of our day have built up a 
great intercollegiate organization which numbers not less than 
thirteen hundred Christian organizations among men students and 
women students in the United States and Canada alone. It has 
gathered a membership of scores of thousands — not less than 
seventy thousand. It is cultivating the whole range of moral and 
religious life among students so far as that is carried on by 
voluntary agencies. The colleges have been bound more and 
more closely together each year. As a result we find that the 
vision of the Haystack Band is more than realized among the 
colleges and theological seminaries of North America alone. 
What makes this point more significant is the fact that there is a 
similar national Christian student movement among the univer- 
sities and colleges of the British Isles; another in the German 
universities; another binding together the societies of Christian 
students in France, Switzerland, Belgium, and Holland; still 
another grouping the Christian organizations of university men 
and women in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland; a most 
efficient society of students and school boys and scholars in South 
Africa, embracing both British and Dutch and native South 
African; an organization that includes virtually all the colleges 
of Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand, and would put to 
shame some of those in the Old World; strong national student 
organizations in India, Ceylon, China, Japan, and the Levant, and 
scattered societies in parts of Africa other than South Africa, and 
in South America and the Pacific Island world. Then remember 
that the students of this generation have not only perfected these 
societies in the individual colleges, and in the nations and groups 



VISION OF THE HAYSTACK REALIZED. 189 

of nations, but they have formed within a Httle over a decade 
what is known as the World's Christian Student Federation, which 
federates these various national and international societies of 
students, which has branches in two thousand separate schools and 
colleges, which embraces a membership of one hundred and ten 
thousand students and professors. One of the three great 
objects of this world-wide combination of students is the mis- 
sionary object, — and this is true of the local societies, of the na- 
tional societies, and of the world society, — the leading of students 
to make their lives count most for the evangelization of the world 
at home and abroad. In view of all these facts am I not right in 
saying that the students of this generation have marvelously 
realized the vision of the Haystack Band? 

" One might illustrate this by a contrast. There were five 
men there at the Haystack Prayer ^Meeting. The other day, just 
before I started on my last journey to the southern hemisphere, I 
attended a convention in Nashville of the Student Volunteer 
Movement, — the missionary development of this great world- 
wide federation in North America alone, — and how many were 
there gathering around the missionary idea for prayer and dis- 
cussion? Not a little group of five, but a vast auditorium filled 
with about five thousand, of whom three thousand were students, 
and, by the way, we had had to turn back over two thousand stu- 
dents who had paid their registration fees and were wishing to 
come. Five thousand students, including those who wanted to 
come, or five thousand if you include those that gathered with 
them, as contrasted with the five men at the Haystack Prayer 
Meeting. And those Williams students had to do their work in 
secret. The great Nashville convention arrested the attention of 
the world. The first intelligence I received, on reaching South 
Africa some weeks after, was concerning the influence that that 
convention had had in that part of the world. When I went over 
to South America, I did not visit a part of what we call that 
neglected continent where I did not find the impress of the Nash- 
ville convention. In the days of the Williams Haystack Band 
the cause of missions did not have many influential advocates. 
The students had to look far and wide to find many who at first 
sympathized with their great vision. At Nashville we had sitting 
with us in council the official representatives of over seventy 
missionary societies of North America, nearly two hundred 
foreign missionaries from thirty nations, the editors of the reli- 



190 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

gious press, the leaders of the great movements among the youth 
of our different denominations as well as the interdenominational 
young people's societies, sitting there together and laying common 
plans for the evangelization of the world in our day. And might 
I not draw another contrast? When we remember that it used 
to take days in the period of the Williams Haystack Band to go 
from Williams College to Princeton, for example, and, therefore, 
that they could not hold any student conferences and conventions 
in those days, think what it means that there will assemble in 
Tokyo, Japan, the first week of next April, the conference of the 
World's Student Christian Federation. It will be the first world's 
conference, either secular or religious, ever held in Asia, and it 
will be a notable event. Usually these world's conferences are 
limited to one hundred select delegates, that is, the national 
leaders in work among students, but it has been decided that 
we shall yield to the pressure of the Orient and increase the 
number to five hundred — we could easily make it fifteen hundred. 
We shall have present in Tokyo the flower of the Asiatic church. 
A special committee has been appointed to prepare a list of the 
two hundred and seventy-five leading Christians of Japan from the 
point of view of the educated classes, and these are to be there; 
the seventy leading Christians of China; the twenty leading 
Christians of Korea; not less thaii six of those in the forefront 
among the native Christians of India; representatives from the 
natives of Ceylon, and Siam, and the Southern Pacific. With 
these Oriental delegates — constituting, I repeat it, the flower 
of the Asiatic church — will meet the leaders in the aggressive 
forces of Christianity among the educated classes from practically 
every nation of Europe, from Australasia, South Africa, and North 
America, and even South America, and they will lay plans together 
for the evangelization of the students of the world, for building 
them up in faith and character, for leading them to place their 
lives where they will be most effective in accomplishing the 
world's evangelization. I think a mere statement like this shows 
that that part of the vision of the Williams Haystack Band is 
being realized by students of this generation. 

Student Volunteers. 

The Williams Haystack Band had a vision likewise of a goodly 
number of the strongest Christian students of North America trans- 
planted to fields of greatest need in the non-Christian world. 



A'lSIOX OF THE HAYSTACK REALIZED. 191 

They expressed their desire in the striking clause of their constitu- 
tion giving the object of the Society of Brethren in this language: 
" To effect in the persons of its members a mission or missions to 
the heathen." I do not know a clause that some of our student 
volunteer bands in these days could include to greater advantage 
in their constitution to guide them in their work, because this 
embodies the real spirit of the student movement. Not simply 
to agitate for missions, not simply to feel deeply upon the subject 
of missions, not simply to make resolutions about missions, but 
to go in the persons of our members to those fields and to stay 
there for life! One of the Haystack Band was able to accomplish 
this purpose. I had the inspiration of standing by his grave in 
North Ceylon. I refer to Richards. Three of the members of the 
band became home missionaries, and in that stage of the develop- 
ment who shall say that the}' did not most largeh' accomplish the 
full purpose they had in view? One of them had to give up his 
plan for entering the ministry because of a break in his health. 
Within a few years, their example, their consecration, and the 
plans they set in motion resulted in a number of other students 
of the New England and other eastern states actually going out 
as missionaries. But they were not able to accomplish their 
vision in any extensive way, that is, of distributing a large number 
of students over the great spaces of the non-Christian world. 
Read the correspondence of those men. Read what is said about 
their discussions, and you will see that they had plans which 
embodied the sending out of large numbers to these foreign fields 
that were not evangelized. 

The conditions were unfavorable for realizing their vision. At 
that time there was no American foreign missionary society that 
actually had missions in the non-Christian world; there were 
some so-called missionary societies. Moreover, there was a lack 
of the missionary spirit in the rank and file of the churches. AVhat 
was more serious, the leaders of the churches, generally speaking, 
did not have the missionary vision. With a very few exceptions 
they were not missionary statesmen, although there were some 
splendid exceptions. For reasons hke these, it was not possible 
to realize extensively their vision of having a large number of 
American students distributed throughout the non-Christian 
world. It was left to the students of this generation likewise to 
fulfill that vision. Imagine Samuel Mills, Richards, Loomis, 
Robbins, and Green making a visit to the office of the Student 



192 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

Volunteer Movement in New York City, and the office of that 
movement in London, and taking the records of this movement and 
finding that from these two branches of the Volunteer Movement 
alone within twenty years there have gone out from colleges and 
theological seminaries of the United States, Canada, and Great 
Britain, not a few scores, but forty-five hundred students as foreign 
missionaries. Add to that the thousands of other missionaries 
of the British Isles and North America who were formerly stu- 
dents, but not members of the Student Volunteer Movement, 
either because it had not been organized in colleges where they 
studied, or for other reasons, and I think we see again that the 
students of this generation have abundantly realized the vision of 
the Haystack Band. We have had more college men and women 
in North America volunteer for foreign missions since the Nash- 
ville convention last February than actually went out to the 
foreign field in the first twenty-five years after the Haystack 
Prayer Meeting. 

Missionary Movements. 

The Haystack Band had a further vision. They had a 
vision of a missionary society that would make possible the send- 
ing out of the students who might decide to become missionaries. 
From the beginning they emphasized the principle of the canti- 
lever bridge, that if we are to push one arm out into India and 
Africa and the Turkish empire, we must push out equally an arm 
into the interest and intelligence and convictions and sacrifices 
and prayers of Christians at home. In other words, there must 
be an adequate base to sustain the world-wide war. They gave 
themselves to the accomplishing of their desire with an adroitness 
and with a thoroughness that would stimulate any students who 
study the records even in our day. What did they do? They not 
only visited the colleges and seminaries and corresponded with 
them, but they began a process of cultivation with individual min- 
isters. They made visits to the homes of these ministers. " Some 
of them even spent the long vacation where they could bring their 
influence to bear most largely upon certain ministers whom they 
wished to influence. As a result of what they did in writing and 
speaking, — and, by the way, they printed two most effective 
addresses that ought to be revived and used in these days, — as a 
result of these means they constituted, by common consent, the 
principal among different causes that led to the formation of this 



VISION OF THE HAYSTACK REALIZED. " 193 

great American Board under whose auspicies we meet; and, as is 
equally well known, this society, by its example and by its sug- 
gestion, has led to the formation, directly or indirectly, of other 
missionary boards, until today we have literally scores of mis- 
sionary societies in the United States and Canada. We need one 
more, and we need that very badly, — a society which will have as 
its object the prevention of the formation of any more missionary 
organizations. 

When you think of what we have in the way of organizations 
today, in contrast with what this little Williams band saw in their 
vision, I see a striking contrast. And yet they did accomplish 
that vision. They were not concerned about many societies. I 
sometimes wish their plan might have prevailed of preserving one 
great interdenominational society, and yet possibly we have been 
led by a wiser providence in laying this burden on the various 
denominations. But we are swinging back to the time when, by 
some simple plan of federation, we may realize more fully the great 
vision they had by keeping the various forces of the church in 
heart-to-heart touch. 

We have helped, however, as a generation, in realizing their 
vision, even with reference to the home base. When I think of 
what the Student Volunteer Movement is doing for the home field 
I feel that the Williams College men of the Haystack Band would 
rejoice were they with us. The Volunteer Movement is quite as 
much concerned with making every young man who is to be a 
minister at home, and every j^oung man and young woman who 
is to be a lay-worker at home, a true missionary in spirit as it is 
concerned in getting recruits for the foreign field. This world 
will never be evangelized until we have the same consecration 
and enthusiasm of a missionary character among the leaders of 
the aggressive forces of Christianity at home which is exemplified 
in those who go to lead the forces at the front. We have not 
only the Volunteer Movement, but we have that supplemen- 
tary movement, the Young People's Missionary Movement. 
In my judgment, it is a most providential and significant move- 
ment. The Volunteer Movement exists to raise up the leaders 
who are to go to the front and to take charge of the churches at 
home as pastors, filled with the missionary vision. The Young 
People's Missionary Movement exists to educate the millions"of 
members in Young People's societies and Sunday-schools that 
they may flood the churches with the missionary spirit. These 



194 ' THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

two great agencies, working under the leadership of the mission- 
ary societies, and related with unswerving loyalty to the various 
evangelical churches, constitute two agencies which God is going 
to use in developing a base which will make possible the projec- 
tion of this enlarging number of student volunteers. 

[; - ' World Evangelization. 

The Williams Haystack Band had a vision of the world 
speedily evangelized. It is impossible to read what has been 
preserved of the writings of that band without having one's heart 
deeply stirred with the idea that they were under pressure to get 
this task done as quickly as possible. There is an element of 
immediacy, of urgency, — the feeling that '' the night cometh 
when no man can work,'' — about the language and the actions and 
the spirit and the very prayers of those men, that kindles our 
hearts. I get precisely the same impression when I turn to read 
the pages of the Acts of the Apostles and certain sections of the 
Pauline Epistles. If ever I am tempted to be sluggish and to 
lose my sense of pressure about the shortness of the time, I only 
need to read aloud to myself, for example, the first eight chapters 
of the book of the Acts. It is the same spirit that seemed to vi- 
brate in the Haystack Band. Oh, how they longed to have this 
world flooded with the full light of Christ in their day ! They com- 
municated their spirit not only to their own society, but to others. 
You will find it beating through that marvelous address sent back 
by Samuel Newell and Gordon Hall. I wish that the American 
Board could reprint that appeal and send it far and wide through 
the colleges and theological seminaries and out among the Young 
People's societies. There may seem to be some crude arguments 
in it. There may be a quaint way of putting some things, an 
old-fashioned way of stating some of their positions; but the fires 
of God are still burning in that wonderful appeal. 

There was also another appeal which the American Board 
printed and which has been retired a long time. Possibly the 
Board might not want to reprint that appeal, as I remember some 
parts of it, and yet I wish there might be at least an expurgated 
edition. I refer to the appeal that went forth from the mission- 
aries of the Sandwich Islands in 1836 entitled, " The Duty of 
Christians to Evangelize the World in this Generation " — that 
is, in their generation. Some people seem to think that that idea 
was not heard of until somewhat recently. I found a copy of that. 



- VISION OF THE HAYSTACK REALIZED. 195 

old appeal in the library in Oberlin when I was making certain 
investigations there. I understand there is another copy in the 
library of the American Board, and no doubt there are others in 
existence. I hope the day will not be far distant when we shall 
have, at least, the larger part of that appeal from the Hawaiian 
Islands reprinted, as well as the appeal of Hall and Newell. This 
little band at Williams College had the spirit of immediacy, the 
spirit of wanting the world evangelized quickly. Later, Andover 
had the same spirit. Here and there were scattered individuals 
whose souls were burning with the vision, but it had not become 
widespread. It was impossible for those in that generation to 
realize the vision. The students of this generation constitute 
the first generation of students who in any large numbers have 
given themselves to realize the vision. The Student Volunteer 
Movement led off in adopting as its watchword in the year 1888, 
" The evangelization of the world in this generation." It was first 
met with a storm of criticism. It had to fight its way step by 
step, until I am glad to say tonight that it has been adopted by 
other student movements in different parts of the world, and not 
a few of the foremost missionary societies in the world have offi- 
cially endorsed it as an ideal to be kept in mind and to be realized. 
The most conservative church in the United States, probably, the 
United Presbyterian Church, has adopted the plan of evangelizing 
that part of the non-Christian world for which they feel themselves 
responsible, — and it is a large part when we consider the numbers 
in that church, — in their generation, that is, in this generation. 
Who believe in this watchword most strongly? You will be sur- 
prised at my answer. Not simply youthful enthusiasts in the 
colleges whom I meet in my travels on both sides of the Atlantic, 
but as I have gone up and down Asia, Africa, the Pacific Island 
world, and South America I have been amazed — and yet no 
longer am I amazed — to find that the missionaries, the people 
face to face with the difficulties, who know best what is involved 
in evangelizing the world in a generation, are those who hold most 
tenaciously to this idea. You will hear a masterly address in this 
convention of the American Board by a man who stands on the 
threshold of the most difficult field — the Mohammedan field — • 
of the non-Christian world. It is men like that, I find, who have 
thought down into this matter, who have eliminated the purely 
visionary and the theoretical and the imaginative, who w^ould give 
their lives to the realization of this great'purpose. And yet I 



196 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

am glad to say that young men and women still have their visions, 
and that the most commanding vision among the young men and 
women on both sides of the Atlantic in this day is of the world 
evangelized in our generation. What do we mean by this? Not 
the conversion of the world. God only knows how long that will 
take. Not the Christianization of the world. Judging by history, 
that will take many centuries. Where is the nation today that 
we can call purely Christian? Nor does it mean the superficial 
preaching of the gospel. Nobody resents this more than those 
who advocate the idea of the evangelization of the world in this 
generation. I know of no agency that stands more for thorough- 
ness than the Volunteer Movement on both sides of the ocean. 
Nor does it mean the minimizing of any form or phase of mis- 
sionary work. It stands rather for the emphasizing of the belief 
that, by the multiplication of all these agencies and plans which 
God has been using, the gospel can and should be preached to all 
people. Expressed in other language, the evangeUzation of the 
world in this generation means to give all people an adequate 
opportunity to know, and then, if they will, to accept, Jesus Christ 
as their personal Saviour and Lord. It is not to be interpreted 
as an end in itself. Its advocates are constantly insisting that 
after the peoples have been evangelized they must still be in- 
structed and baptized and built up and organized into churches, 
established in faith and character, trained in methods of unselfish 
service, brought to bear upon the problem of the extension of 
Christianity, and that we must keep ever in mind the building up 
— as was so eloquently stated today — of self-supporting, self- 
governing, self-propagating native churches of such strength that 
if Christianity were to die out in the United States and England it 
would abide as a propagating force in Japan and in the Levant 
and India and South America. Therefore, when we speak of 
evangelizing the world in this generation, we mean not some super- 
ficial, unscientific, unscriptural, careless statement. The ideal of 
the Williams Haystack Band, possessed, we believe, by the 
Apostolic Church, was eminently scriptural. All men need 
Christ, and therefore this must be done in our day. We owe 
Christ to all men, and therefore it must be done in our day; the 
Christians of this generation must evangelize the non-Christians 
of this generation, if they are ever to be evangelized. The Chris- 
tians of the last generation cannot do it, can they? They are 
dead and gone. The Christians who are coming after us cannot 



VISION OF THE HAYSTACK REALIZED. 197 

do it, can they? The individuals now Hving will then be gone. 
Obviously, the Christians of each generation must give to the 
non-Christians of that generation the opportunity to know about 
Jesus Christ. The students of our generation, in common with 
the Haystack Band, insist that this thing not only ought to be 
done, but, to a degree that the membership of that band could 
not insist, we bear down on the fact that it can be done. 

Missionary Expansion. 

How may the vision of the Haystack Band with reference 
to this speedy evangelization of the world be more rapidly and 
thoroughly realized? I think we will agree that the first three 
aspects of their vision which I have mentioned tonight have been 
realized — that is, an intercollegiate missionary society; students 
streaming out to the non-Christian nations to stay there for life 
as missionaries; adequate missionary agencies to send them. 
Those parts of the vision, you admit, have been realized. The 
last part, the speedy evangelization of the world, is yet far from 
realization. How may this vision, I repeat, be more speedily, — 
and let me link up with that at once, — more thoroughly realized? 
I will give the answer in outline. 

There must be far more extensive missionary operations. 
The time has come to grapple with this great work on a broad 
scale. Conditions now in the foreign field favor such an enlarge- 
ment of our operations. The conditions at home favor it. We 
must have nothing less than a great army of properly qualified 
missionaries, before the generation closes, to accomplish the task. 
There must be a marvelous enlargement of the financial coopera- 
tion of Christians. We must not be satisfied with the present 
rate of increase in the gifts of Christians. I firmly believe that 
the time has come when thousands of individual Christians and 
families, including not a few represented here tonight, not to 
speak of churches, should support their own missionary or mis- 
sionaries. I likewise believe that the time has come when the 
Young People's Missionary Movement, and agencies working there- 
with, can educate a generation of youth to completely revolu- 
tionize the habits of living in our churches. With equal convic- 
tion do I believe that the time has come when, with a proper 
presentation of the missionary enterprise, it will receive bene- 
factions as princely as those which have been given to higher edu- 
cation in North America and the British Isles w^ithin the past 



198 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

decade. We must have an enlargement of the supervisory agen- 
cies on the home base. I mean by that an increase in the number 
of board secretaries, especially in the field. What was sufiicient 
twenty years ago is not sufficient today. People are much more 
absorbed and life is more complex. Appeals are more conflicting, 
materialism is waxing. It is going to take a larger combination, 
organized on the best modern business lines, and flooded with the 
spirit of God, to meet the present situation. 

The second thing that is necessary is a statesmanlike plan. 
People follow a big plan and a high ideal. They have never been 
known to lag behind it. I ask you whether this is not true, that 
the present plan of our churches is inconsistent with a deep con- 
viction that God wants this world to hear about Christ in one 
generation? It is inconsistent with that conception. I will go 
further and say that in my judgment the time has come when 
there should be a fresh study on the part of our various churches 
^s a whole, possibly by a commission, of the world-wide fleld, that 
it should then be mapped out, and plans should be put on foot for 
an effective occupation. It is absurd to say that there is not 
statesmanship and churchmanship enough in our great Christian 
bodies to do what is done today in the realm of commerce on 
precisely these lines. I cannot amplify that point. 

The third thing that is necessary, if we are to evangelize the 
world speedily and thoroughly, is this. Besides having this 
enlargement of our operations and of the plan involved, there 
must be a closer unification and a better coordination of the 
missionary forces, especially on the home field. Here is one of 
the crowning glories of the American Board. It has never lagged 
behind in standing for comity and cooperation and unity. If the 
other denominations of North America would do likewise, we 
could revolutionize the missionary operations of North American 
and European Christianity. 

I wish I might enlarge upon that point, but I pass to mention, 
as a fourth thing that is essential, that if this world is to be evan- 
gelized speedily and thoroughly, this enterprise as a whole must be 
flooded more than ever with the Holy Ghost sent down from 
heaven. The ground, Mr. Chairman, of my hope and confidence 
tonight is not so much the strength of missionary organizations, 
not the number of missionaries, not the fullness of the treasury, 
not the splendid material plants and equipments, not the great 
interest already awakened among myriads of young people, not 



VISION OF THE HAYSTACK REALIZED. 199 

the experience we have acquired in the wonderful centur}" that 
has passed; not the inspiring watchwords and splendid forward 
movements, not the statesmanship and far-sighted plans — 
although I believe in all these most thoroughly. But my hope 
rests not so much in these as in the fact that the work is to be 
accomplished by the Holy Spirit himself, who is the Author of 
this work. Men have tried to accomplish it at times in other 
ways. It is a divine work. Missionary spirit and achievement are 
the product of the Holy Ghost. This matter is not the result of 
human ingenuity and a large expenditure of human energy and 
organization; it is the work of God. 

And then I say, finally, that we who have had these never-to- 
be-forgotten privileges of being at Williams and at North Adams 
in these days should go away to be men and women of vision. 
After all, visions are the strength of our life. Where there is no 
vision the people perish, the world perishes. Christ was the 
supreme visionary. He said, '' I, if I be lifted up, will draw all 
men unto me.'^ He peered down through the centuries to the 
realization of that vision. And we want something besides simply 
the vision of the Haystack Band. We want our own vision — 
the vision of the cross of Christ with its satisfying power, and the 
vision of that great multitude whom no man can number, out of 
all nations and from all tribes and tongues and kindreds, standing 
before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes 
and with palms in their hands, shouting with a loud voice, " Salva- 
tion unto our God and unto the Lamb that sitteth upon the 
throne! " 

"But lo, there da^NTis a yet more glorious da}^ 
The saints triumphant rise in bright arraj^, 
The King of Glory passes on His way. 
' Alleluia! 

" From earth's wide bounds, from ocean's farthest coast, 
Through gates of pearl streams in the countless host, 
Singing to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost — 
AUeluia!" 



200 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 



THE MISSIONARY CHALLENGE TO THE STUDENTS 
OF THIS GENERATION. 

Prof. Harlan P. Beach, of Yale University. 

The challenge with which we have to do is addressed to the 
students of this generation. And surely no previous generation 
of students has been so well prepared for heeding a challenge that 
demands men and women adequately equipped for the manifold 
work of the various mission fields. 

The Qualifications. 

I. May I suggest a few respects in which the men and women 
in our institutions of higher learning are peculiarly fitted for the 
varied tasks falling to the lot of effective missionaries today? 

First, the range of studies found in our college catalogues is far 
broader than was printed in those of a few decades ago. Latin 
and Greek, which were so prominent then, and which have un- 
doubted value as a means of discipline and as a fount of culture, 
have largely given place to more practically useful studies. A 
graduate of any high-grade institution today has a wider horizon 
than his father had seen before his graduation. Pope's dictum: 
" The proper study of mankind is man,'' is being realized at 
last, so that students understand the life of our time through a 
rational interpretation of history. " They have studied sociology, 
ethnology, and economics. They have taken courses in pedagogy, 
so essential for those whose work abroad is mainly that of teachers. 
Their philosophical studies have been such as furnish them with 
weapons to meet current philosophical objections to Christianity, 
urged by keen Brahmans or alert Japanese students. Those who 
heard Secretary Barton's notable address at the Nashville Con- 
vention will see how directly this broader training of the modern 
college student contributes to effective mission work. 

Enlarged sympathy is a second characteristic of our students 
to an extent that was not true fifty years ago. For four years 
they sit side by side in classroom and club with fellow-students 
from Armenia, India, the Philippines, China, and Japan. The 
close intimacy and rivalry of the athletic field and examination 
hall engender mutual respect and friendship. ^' Heathen " is an 



THE MISSIONARY CHALLENGE. 201 

unthinkable word; the aspirations of these brothers from across 
the sea are shared by their classmates. In the item of difference 
of religion, American students feel a sympathy which would be 
impossible without the foundation of friendship and respect which 
constant association begets. The study of comparative religion, 
which is becoming quite common in our larger colleges and uni- 
versities, fosters still more the sense of brotherhood; and Christian 
men see in the gropings of the nad^ions after God the sure evidence 
of religious capacity and of an unarticulated longing for that God 
and Father of all, whom we know more perfectly. It is hardly 
possible for students who have had this sort of training to be other 
than cosmopolitan in spirit; nor are they likely as missionaries to 
violate those requirements of courtesy and tactfulness which are 
such important factors in missionary effectiveness. 

A third particular in which our students are better fitted for 
meeting the challenge of the mission fields than were men of pre- 
vious generations is found in the greater prevalence of the spirit 
of Christian unity in our colleges and universities. As practically 
every college has a Christian Association, that great harmonizer 
of divergent beliefs has sunk denominational differences and uni- 
fied all Christians in common efforts for personal spiritual growth 
and for outreaching Christian activity. When one recalls how 
detrimental to missionary success all sectarianism is, and how 
common the spirit of Christian union and cooperation is becoming 
on the foreign fields, one can only thank God for this college 
preparation for those fields. 

A fourth respect in which our students are prepared to listen 
to the missionary challenge is found in the preparation afforded, 
mainly in the Student Association, but also through other societies, 
and in some cases through courses in the curriculum. Thus nearly 
all prospective missionaries during their undergraduate years 
receive a training in the textual and devotional study of the Bible 
which is broad in its range and vital in its power over life. This 
sort of study is far more useful than the critical — particularly 
the higher critical — study of the Scriptures for ninety-five per 
cent of our missionaries. Though the study of missions is not 
participated in so widely as is voluntary Bible study, most candi- 
dates are enrolled among the ten thousand students who annually 
engage in that work. Hardly less important as a preparative is the 
experience gained through the wisely organized activities of the 
Association. '^ Team work " thus becomes familiar to college 



202 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

men and women; the habit of unitedly studying common religious 
problems and methods of work is carried by them to remote 
mission stations; and the inspiring memories of Northfield, Ashe- 
ville, Lake Geneva, and Silver Bay are so abiding that Northfields 
spring up in Japan, China, and India, to the manifest advance- 
ment of the kingdom of God. 

Demands of the Fields. 

II. Turning now to the more practical side of our theme, let us 
consider the varied demands made by the fields. What is the 
challenge of the fields? 

First of all, it is a challenge to intelligent work. Traditionalism 
in the methods and theories of missions held in the field to which 
one goes cannot meet this challenge, unless it be a traditionalism 
based upon a sane, united, unremitting, prayerful study of condi- 
tions by all those competent to discuss its varied problems. A 
foundation has been laid by the far-sighted candidate in special 
postgraduate studies, either in the graduate department of the 
university, or in special seminary courses. After one has orien- 
tated himself in his station and has learned the best that his col- 
leagues — especially the native fellow- workers — can impart to him, 
he increases his knowledge by wise experimentation based upon 
the wider experience of other parts of his chosen country, or of 
more distant mission fields. The hit-or-miss, thoughtless, narrow 
program of missions is passing with the increase of missionary 
conferences and the advance in field visitation. 

Secondly, the challenge of the fields is to versatihty. Specialists 
have their place in some countries and missions, but the vast 
majority of our missionaries will need, for years to come, the versa- 
tility of our old hero, master of nearly a score of trades, Dr. Cyrus 
Hamlin. The man who chafes at the monotony of a home 
pastorate, who, in the phrase of Mills, is ^' pestered in this pinhole 
here,'' will find his over-sea parish a perplexing tangle of possi- 
bilities that call for a specialist-in-everything. At least he must 
supply needs that call for such a melange as used to be found, in 
my undergraduate days at New Haven, in a ten-by-twelve box 
of a store kept by fully matured maiden sisters who had pledged 
over the door this fairly truthful legend, '' A general assortment 
of almost everything." 

Thirdly, this challenge comes from lands which in many cases 
are undergoing a national transformation, usually abnormally 



THE MISSIONARY CHALLENGE. 203 

rapid in character. The transformation from feudal conditions 
into an empire that easily holds the hegemony of the far East 
is the greatest wonder of historical millenniums. And yet, what 
Japan has accomplished in half a century, China is doing at this 
moment; and if the present rate of speed is maintained for a 
quarter of a century, she will eclipse even Japan's marvelous record. 
When nations are in the flux and are willing to accept the aid of 
Christian nations, then is the time for Christians to seize the 
opportunity. And surely no man can ask for a greater privilege 
than is offered by a formative method like this. Guido Verbeck 
may have been a " man without a country," but his adopted land 
owes more to him than to any other foreigner — more perhaps 
than to any Japanese. Very, very few missionaries can be 
Schwartzes and Livingstones and Verbecks, but every missionary 
is able to effect greater changes than he ever would in America. 
Storrs, the young New Hampshire pastor who went out to China 
three years ago, writes back with truth that at this early stage in 
his career he can accomplish four times as much as in his New 
England parish, so unusual are the openings at this period of 
transition. The Christian student should think, too, of what will 
happen if the ideas underlying our civilization are left out in these 
times of change and fixation. Nations will be defective in those 
things that make for highest progress; the kingdom of God will 
be greatly retarded in its onward sweep. 

In the fourth place, the critical religious situation in non- 
Christian lands constitutes an appealing challenge. The religions 
of most mission countries are genuine, even if crude, attempts to 
account for the seemingly supernatural phenomena of daily experi- 
ence, as well as their attempt to provide an ethical and religious 
norm. As Western civilization enters such a land with its true 
explanation of nature's laws, and with its contempt for all super- 
stition, the old beliefs are seen to be irrational. The gods and 
their useless cult are cast aside by the intelligent leaders, with, the 
result that they are left without a religion, and use their influence 
to discredit popular religious beliefs and practices. Naturally 
this empty, swept, and garnished house is speedily taken posses- 
sion of by other evil spirits of unbelief and moral laxity. Chris- 
tianity is attractive and rational and could have occupied the 
empty house if Christians had been at hand to make its claims 
clear and to illustrate the power of true religion. " Christ or 
Confucius — which? " '' India's Problem — Krishna or Christ,'^ 



204 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

have been titles of moving discussions long enough. Let us enter 
the lists for our Champion and win India and China for Him. 

A fifth challenge from the fields is a loud call to leadership. 
As the missionary enterprise has passed from the old individual- 
istic stage to the socialistic, organization and community of 
interests have come to the front. This change demands men and 
women who are competent to lead in the new Christian community 
and in the awakening state. Men who can lead the evangelistic 
forces of the native church in an aggressive campaign against 
indifference and ignorant contempt for Christianity are most 
commonly needed. I vividly recall the enthusiasm with which 
our North China veteran, the late Dr. Blodget, used to picture 
the vision that possessed his eager soul — the vision of the day 
when the evangelistic missionary would be to a group of native 
workers what Jesus was to the Twelve. He would grow eloquent 
as he pictured the impressions that such a company would make 
as they went from village to village with the message of a great 
salvation. That this hope was not unfounded is abundantly 
proved by the success of George Eddy in our own Madura field, 
and by the still more significant labors of Canada's hero, Mackay 
of Formosa. But leaders are demanded in other kinds of work 
as well. Some missions call for organizers of labor and industry, 
all of them need men and women who can effectively organize the 
Christian work of a church, assigning to every one a definite and 
responsible task. Educationists are required to lead the church 
and to aid the government in the new educational movements that 
are remaking many nations. Diplomats are necessary to meet 
the revolt against leadership in a few lands where national con- 
sciousness is emerging and making native Christians restive under 
foreign ecclesiastical control. But the kind of leader whom the 
infant church most needs is the man or woman whose life is so 
manifestly hid with Christ in God that a high and holy enthusiasm 
is awakened in believers and unbelievers alike. Such mission- 
aries will never be without a company of imitators who can be led 
to any position of hardness and danger. 

The Missionary Challenge. 

III. But who are those who utter this challenge to the students 
of our generation? 

One would naturally mention first those in our own fields who 
are anxiously crying out, " Come over and help us." Thus Bitlis, 



THE MISSIONAKY CHALLENGE. • 205 

in our Eastern Turkey Mission, is a field which calls for heroic 
men. In that mountainous region, with its lawless Kurds, there 
is work for the bravest and most persistent; but when one labors 
for parishioners who after two years' unlawful imprisonment 
thanked God for the opportunity thus afforded to preach 
daily to their fellow-prisoners, our heroisms seem puny. A no 
less loud call from an entirely different sort of a post comes from 
Lin Ching, on the old Grand Canal in China. Two or three 
years ago Mr. Chapin, who was then the only missionary there, 
kept a record of those who wished to receive instruction in Chris- 
tianity, until the number of men reached five hundred, when he 
refused to add another name, so hopeless was it for one man 
to overtake such a work. Since that time he has been over- 
burdened with the harvesting of this wonderful time in China. Go 
over and help, some of you students here, — or perhaps better yet, 
one of you young pastors who has had experience here in America. 
These are but two samples of those who are daily challenging the 
American Board to heed their cry. 

Let us not forget that millions of challengers are our brothers 
and sisters. The parable of the sheep and the goats in St. Mat- 
thew, twenty-fifth chapter, makes this perfectly clear. It is my 
brother and sister, and yojurs, who are hungering and thirsting 
literally; but what is more important, it is*^^ not a famine of bread, 
nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the Word of the Lord.'' 
They are literally sick and need the Christian physician with his 
double cure; they are imprisoned and bound by chains that seem 
beyond human power to burst. They are strangers to the better 
things of life, and their nakedness and rags are a reproach to us 
well-clothed Christians. But they are also our brothers and 
brethren of Jesus, even though they be " the least." Do not their 
lame hands of faith stretched out toward those who are not true 
gods, their cries to the priest, or medicine man, or sorcerer, who 
is the only savior known to them, — do they not move you 
deeply? If our wills are not stirred to action, the refrain of the 
hidden Jesus must haunt us in the last and solemn day, '^ Ye did 
it not unto me." 

But, thirdly, this missionary challenge is uttered by no less a 
personage than our Saviour and Lord. A volume soon to be 
published claims that Jesus never uttered the last commission, 
and this claim is made by one who has done much for missions, 
I do not believe that all of us would find his arguments convincing. 



206 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

but I am positive that you and the author of the book himself will 
agree that if anything is clear in the gospels, the petitions, " Our 
Father, who art in heaven, . . . thy kingdom come, thy will be 
done in earth as it is in heaven "; that pitying wail over those 
other sheep not of this fold whom he would gather unto himself; 
that self-disclosure to the questioning Greeks in the temple, and 
to nations yet unborn, " I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will 
draw all men unto me,'' — these and many another word of Jesus 
make it patent that the great object of his coming into the world 
was to seek and save that which was lost. It is, then, the challenge 
of the great Finder of men flung down before the found ones who 
for long have been feasting in his banqueting house of love, and 
whom he would have imitate the Good Shepherd who gladly lays 
down his life for the sheep. 

Finally, we cannot believe that the Almighty God, the everlast- 
ing Father, he who " made of one blood all nations of men to dwell 
on all the face of the earth," can be oblivious of the woes and 
longings of his creatures. Let the lowest among men, as some 
ethnologists regard them, the Australian Blackfellows, believe in 
Buddai, who in the dim past engulfed mankind in a great flood, 
after which he assumed the role of a gigantic old man who has for 
ages been asleep in the sand and who at last will swallow up man- 
kind. Such is not our God and Father. As Jesus in the pearl of 
parables depicts our Father, his eye is upon the road down which 
wilfully or unwittingly his children have gone into that far country 
where all men sooner or later are in want and live on unsatisfying 
husks. Because he desires them to come back to the ancestral 
home, he would send you and me to tell them of his abiding love 
and fatherly yearning. The idea that he does not care for them 
and is glad to leave every man to his own devices is unbelievable, 
and wholly at variance with that concise definition of him which 
in the literal translation of the Mandarin version of the New Testa- 
ment reads, '' God's heart, then, is love." 

IV. A fourth word has to do with the phrase, " this generation." 
Let this old world be as venerable as geologists and evolutionists 
would make it; let its many races be granted a life many times 
longer than the traditional chronology of our Bibles; yet it 
nevertheless remains true that for some thousands of years the 
age of man has not exceeded the psalmist's measure of three score 
and ten, while the average duration of life is a third of a century. 
The Chinese ideograph for world and also for generation is made 



THE MISSIONARY CHALLENGE. 207 

up of the sign for ten thrice repeated. According to this Unguistic 
fossil of a remote past, in three brief decades the races of men 
come to birth, live out their joyous or cheerless lives, and crumble 
into dust — sixteen hundred millions of them. During the three 
days that we are celebrating what a few prophetic students ini- 
tiated a century ago, almost a quarter of a million of our brothers 
and sisters will have passed from earth without ever having had 
an opportunity to know our Father and their Father, or of experi- 
encing his peace which passeth all understanding. 

Exceeding Great Rewards. 

V. Finally, the challenge to the students of this generation, 
like those in ancient tourneys, carries with it an exceeding great 
reward. Jesus himself spoke of those who for his sake and the 
gospel's should go on his errands of mercy, leaving houses, or 
brethren, or mother, or children, or lands. '' What a series of 
losses! " one says. No; read to the end. There is no one who 
thus loses ^' who shall not receive manifold more in this time, and 
in the world to come eternal life." It is not the smile and favor 
of some '' queen of beauty " that the missionary knight seeks. 
Every modern apostle learns on the field of conflict that there is a 
love passing that of woman, and that to have with one '' all the 
days '' a beatific and abiding Presence is all that one can ask or 
desire. 

But other rewards are not wanting, the most precious of which, 
it seems to me, is the gratitude of those whom one has been privi- 
leged to aid in the struggle toward the light. May I be pardoned 
for giving a personal illustration of what other missionaries have 
experienced under similar circumstances. After only six years 
of service in dear old China, ill health made an immediate return 
to America imperative. The decision came on Friday, and we 
succeeded in keeping the matter from the native Christians until 
Sunday, the day before our departure. Nothing unusual occurred 
until our young Chinese pastor raised his hands to pronounce the 
benediction. He had only said the words, '' May the grace of 
our Lord Jesus Christ/' when he was overcome with his emotions 
and a foreigner was obliged to finish. Then a man of forty, once 
a leader of a sect who had under him five-hundred men, ostensibly 
followers of " the sages and holy men," but who really were cov- 
ert revolutionists, — a man with whom I had sat day after day in 
an experience which he described as '' heaven," — came up and 



208 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

placed in my hands a poem which he had composed and which 
expressed feeUngs that he did not venture to voice orally, — a 
bit of paper which in real worth was vastly more valuable than a 
thousand-dollar bond. Never can we forget that awful, blessed 
day. Men singly and in groups, women in a great company, came 
to the house, all with tears in their eyes or in their voices, and the 
testimony was of one tenor: " You have brought us a great bless- 
ing; we cannot bear to have you go." The women were appar- 
ently in the condition of one of the Bible readers whom Mrs. 
Beach had asked to take charge in her stead of a Sunday-school 
outside the west gate of the city. She finally consented to do so 
with this condition, that on that first afternoon a towel should be 
loaned her. Being asked the reason for so strange a request, she 
replied, " When I go out there and tell the women and girls that 
you are going home and may not return, they will all cry so hard, 
and I will cry too.'' Nothing short of a towel would then do 
duty for the dear soul, a women who, when the Boxers came in 
1900 and she was drowned, sank beneath the waters literally with 
a song in her mouth. 

The next morning we planned to leave early, and when I arose 
I heard nothing. Imagine my surprise on looking out the window 
to see in the yard a multitude of men, women, and children waiting 
in silence. As we went out of the compound, the feeling was 
intense both in their hearts and in ours. I had thought that when 
we left the premises our trials would be over, but in the street were 
our eleven theological students bent upon accompanying us out- 
side the city gate. It was simply unbearable. I turned to them 
and said: " We are all brothers and love each other. I thank you 
for your kind thought, but it simply will not do for you to go 
further. We cannot contain ourselves; we must not go weeping 
through the streets." And then came those common but beautiful 
words of parting which usually are meaningless, but which were 
so full of import then, " In the bright day, we shall see." Yes, 
and not until that Great and Glorious Day, for when, two years 
ago, we returned, it was to find our compound with its nearly fifty 
buildings razed to the ground, not one brick upon another, with 
not a trace of great trees, two of which were four centuries old. 
And of those men and women and children, we saw only a scat- 
tered remnant, for one hundred and thirty-two church members 
sealed their devotion with their blood in the terrible persecutions 
of 1900. 



THE MISSIONARY CHALLENGE. 209 

One of the theological students, Li Te-kuei, did not go back 
when I bade the others adieu. " Shepherd, Shepherd, I cannot 
leave you! It was you who took me from following the donkey, 
gave me the opportunity for study and of aiding in the chapel, 
and thus enabled me to serve the Lord." Dear, dear fellow, my 
heart yearned after him, and in an agony greater by far than I 
had felt when I bade good-by to my mother, years before, we 
wrung each other's hands and parted. The last letter received 
from him before the Boxer carnage told of the way in which God 
was wonderfully using him in his country station, which trans- 
lated means Eternal Joy Inn. And when that June day of his 
translation dawned, my friend would not desert his little flock. 
Finally fleeing with them, the Boxer horde surrounded them. 
The chronicle runs: '^ Mr. Li knelt with hands outstretched to 
heaven, 'Father, if you want us to go,' — but before the prayer 
was finished a rough hook fastened to a long pole dragged him 
over backward. . . . Mrs. Li pleaded for her tiny baby, and 
they answered by taking it from her arms and offering it as 
their first sacrifice. Mr. Li was- the last one of the family to close 
his eyes to earth's horrors. . . . One who passed over this road 
a f eAv hours later saw that two pits had been dug, into which the 
eight bodies had been thrown and roughly buried. It will ever be 
a sacred spot, that wayside grave, where man and wife, faithful 
unto death, lay with the lambs of their flock whom they had 
shepherded so tenderly. In the spring, when the grave was 
opened that the martyrs might be placed in coffins., Mr. Li's body 
was found still in the attitude of prayer. So it will lie until the 
Great Day." Friends, are the " heathen " " worth saving? '' 
Are their lives thrown away, who listen to the challenge of our 
ascended Lord, " Go ye? " 

We cannot know what Jesus, in the days of his flesh, read beside 
the Scriptures, but I love to think that a Talmudic saying of that 
day was often in his eager heart, as I would that it might be in 
ours: ''The day is short; the work is vast; the reward is great;. 
the Master urges." If this becomes our watchword, we shall 
realize the ambition of Mills who a century ago wrote to a kindred 
spirit: " Though you and I are very little beings, we must not 
rest content until we have made our influence extend to the 
remotest corner of this ruined world." 



210 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 



HAYSTACK MEN IN THE MINISTRY. 

Rev. Charles O. Day, D.D., 

President of Andover Theological Seminary. 

I PRESIDE here representatively this evening, by the request of 
the American Board. And it being suggested that I offer a few 
words, I am glad to say this: It was a graceful and fitting act for 
the American Board to give this invitation; graceful, because a 
recognition of the real unity of purpose and work which has 
prevailed between the two institutions; and fitting, because in 
the events this day has commemorated the place of Andover was 
so large and so significant. Two of the " Men of the Haystack '' 
came from Williamstown to Andover, James Richards and 
Samuel J. Mills. There they were joined by men from other 
colleges, by whom was deepened and perpetuated the flow of the 
spring which broke forth from. beneath the haystack. These 
young men were strengthened by President Griffin, who went 
from Andover to Williamstown; and counseled by Professor 
Stuart, in his own home on Andover Hill. The famous society, 
called the " Brethren," came to Andover from Williams in 1810, 
and their old book of records is there preserved. To carry out 
the end of the '' Brethren,'^ the Society of Inquiry was organized 
in 1811, with the older secret society as its nucleus and governing 
force. Moreover, a considerable part of the funds of Andover 
Seminary came to her in view of her missionary character. The 
earlier inspiration has been ' reenf orced by the devotion of many 
noble souls, as, notably, by the life of a man like Ngesima, and is 
today quickened by the present zeal of an army, to strike whom 
from the rolls of the Board would be to decimate our ranks. 

There is a mysterious, and one might say, cabalistic signifi- 
cance of the number " Five " in all this history. Five men 
gathered beneath the haystack. Five towns made the links of 
progress between the haystack and the foreign field: Williams- 
town, Andover, Bradford, with its crucial meeting of the Massa- 
chusetts General Association; Farmington, Conn., with its formal 
organization of this Board; and Salem, where, in the old Taber- 
nacle Church, the first missionaries were set apart for their work. 
These five famous towns stand for a complex of forces making for 



HAYSTACK MEN IN THE MINISTRY. 211 

missions. Two, Williamstown and Andover, by college and 
seminary, educate men. With prophetic suggestion of the reach 
of missionary agencies, Bradford and Farmington educate women; 
while Salem, with its oceanward look, its museums, its historic 
spirit, and its very name, suggests the work of that universal and 
eternal Spirit made High Priest of the world forever under the order 
of Melchizedek. Five men, Judson, Hall, Nott, Newell, Rice, sat 
on the old settle in that Tabernacle Church, which still cherishes 
it as a memorial of their consecration. Five talents were they, 
" bringing forth five talents more." Five men from Andover 
Seminary, representing all the classes, including all the officers of 
the famous old Society of Inquiry, never more vigorous, though 
reduced nearer to the haystack proportions, are here; and stand 
for that spiritual current which is the deepest and strongest pre- 
vailing in that institution today. Such is the missionary ancestry 
of the present Andover life ! She caAnot depart from its momen- 
tum; she cannot and must not lose this crown, or be robbed of 
this glory. So identified is she with the cause of this Board that 
I make bold to say, as my own opinion, and in all I say here I 
speak for myself, that, of the various theories which eager minds 
in our free order of churches are busy in constructing for Andover, 
this one, though not practicable legally, nor absolutely the best, 
is above all other specializations. It is this: Put Andover 
resources under the whole circle of theological training conducted 
by this Board, the world around; put underneath every theologi- 
cal seminary so much at least of the strength of the Everlasting 
Arms; carry Mills' spirit into every land, literally. That, indeed, 
is a great and appealing thought. 

But as with the towns, so with the men of the haystack. If this 
evening, and just for this moment, we specially think of their 
suggestion, there is a manifold mission to be fulfilled, if such an 
entrustment as created and has sustained Andover shall be carried 
out, if the election of grace shall not fail. Not all of those men 
who prayed together went into foreign missionary work. Two, 
Robbins and Loomis, stayed with the home churches. They 
represent the provision of leadership for our American churches 
themselves, the broad foundation upon which the missionary 
spirit shall build. For such leadership our churches wait. For 
that provision the seminary was founded, the money was given, 
and the work devoted, with most careful, explicit, and far-reaching 
instructions. 



212 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

'^ The primary purpose of the trust as clearly laid down by the 
founders," says one of the best students of the Andover consti- 
tution, '' is the broadest and most effective possible education of 
' learned and able defenders of the gospel of Christ, as well as of 
orthodox, pious, and zealous ministers of the New Testament.' 
Any aim short of this can be taken as a controlling one only when 
it is clear that the primary aim can in no way be carried out.'' 

But not all who went worked in either home churches or in 
foreign fields. For there was Mills himself! He stood for that 
linking of home and foreign interests, representing cause and 
effect on either side, which is the keynote of missions today. 
When we look for the origin of American foreign missions we find 
^ its spring in the soul of the immigrant, and in the first instance 
for New England in the labors of John Eliot for the Indians, part 
of whose salary was paid by the British Society for Propagating 
the Gospel in Foreign Parts, which took life under his quickening 
touch. Mills arose as that type of man, timeless in his inspiration, 
who strives to save America to save the world, and who, in Mills' 
case, died at sea in his famous voyage to open world resources to 
save America; involving in his own life an elevation of motive, a 
range of personal experience, an extension of labor, and a unity 
of conception which make him to be an undying and increasing 
force in the great succession which begins from Christ. His 
modest, amazing life not only linked both foreign and home 
interests, his clear vision not only saw the need, but he saw the 
solution, as though for our guidance, in the only ultimate way. 
He provided an American leadership. He did so in his own 
person, he traveled and distributed Bibles in several tongues. 
He presented the type of leadership in what has been styled a 
bilingual or polylingual ministry, indeed, but American; always 
to be American, though it may sometimes be in foreign-born men; 
trained to the hour; with comprehensive equipment. Nor is 
any other way of solving this question anything but temporary, 
inadequate, inefficient, un-American, failing to meet the real need 
and conscious desire of the strangers in our gates, while falling 
short of a reasonable apostolic linguistic demand and consecration. 
As a matter of fact, only one of the original five went abroad, yet 
he was that one who, with those who reenforced him, gave distinct 
character to Andover, and commits her forever to the direct work 
of training foreign missionaries. God forbid that she should ever 
break with this century of spiritual movement or cease to be 



HAYSTACK MEX IX THE MIXISTRY. 213 

identified with the outlook of those who devoted themselves to 
effect ^' in their own persons " a mission to the heathen. 

In the light of the Williamstown burning bush, that burns but 
cannot be consumed, Andover Seminary is committed to a work 
no less comprehensive than the. history of those men. She must 
be, to change the figure, a fiaming sword turning every way; to 
keep and to signal the way to the tree of life; and that light must 
not be merely a stationary signal, planted on a Massachusetts 
rock, but a torch personally carried to the ends of the earth. 

Now, in all this great history one interesting law appears. It 
is that for the work of the progressive kingdom of God there is 
need on the one hand that the original type of man be preserved, 
but that on the other the training he receives because of the work 
he must do shall be increasingly expanded and enriched. It is 
the same twofoldness presented in the New Testament, in the 
Palestinian work of Jesus Christ and the subsequent work of the 
Holy Spirit. It is stated as involving " a diversity of gifts but 
the same spirit." The one man is needed, with the vision of faith 
in human nature, and with a heart which is an epitome of divine 
love. But, on the other hand, a variety and thoroughness in 
equipment are demanded which grow with every year of the 
world's unfolding. More than in any time since, is the situation 
today like that of the first apostles and demands a training like 
that of Paul, in temple, in city, in seclusion, and these in combi- 
nation; as Jew, Greek, Roman citizen; in knowledge of the soul, 
philosophic insight, grasp upon world religions, power of adjust- 
ment, capacity for leadership. Great as was then the demand 
for complete training, it is indeed still more now. Wherever his 
work may be, the minister must be in a true sense a cosmopolitan 
man, centered in the enduring essentials for theological training, 
into which must be builded the larger human culture. Shall he 
lead the home church? It is the same. Is his work that of aiding, 
by Christianizing at its roots, our great enterprise of race assimi- 
lation, the endeavors of the press, the platform, and supremel}^ the 
public school? The same training is needed. Is he to be a foreign 
missionary? He can be no less. We need, we must produce, such 
men. The kingdom of God is at hand. We must develop and 
train such leaders. We must secure the enrichments, make the 
alliances, rise to the sacrifices which may be needed. We must 
keep pace with the onward movement of God. We must prepare 
good soldiers for a living, a modern, Christ. 



214 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 



THE HERO OF THE HAYSTACK. 

An Illustrated Lecture. 
Rev. Thomas C. Richards, Williams, '87, 
Pastor at Warren, Mass. 

Beginning with the time when the Mills family first located in 
Connecticut, the speaker followed on through the years to the point 
where the brave Williams student, after a trip to Africa in the 
interest of the Negro there, passed away while on the homeward 
trip and was buried at sea. He dwelt on each period of impor- 
tance in the life of Mills only sufficiently to make it perfectly clear, 
with now and then a bit of the humorous side of the man in whose 
memory the big centennial meeting at Williamstown was held, 
Wednesday. 

The first picture which the speaker threw on the canvas was the 
county of Litchfield in Connecticut, in which, in the town of 
Torringford, young Mills was born, in April, 1783. After speaking 
of the many great men and women who had come from this county, 
among whom were Henry Ward Beecher, Ethan Allen, Harriet 
Beecher Stowe, John Brown, and others, Mr. Richards told of the 
arrival in Torringford of a young Yale graduate, Samuel J. Mills, 
who became pastor of the church there, and served as such for 
more than sixty years. Soon after his arrival in Torringford the 
young preacher found a wife in Esther Robbins, a beautiful young 
woman of a neighboring town, and of the seven children born to 
them one was Samuel J. Mills, Jr., later the student of haystack 
fame. 

The speaker then followed Mills through his boyhood, speaking 
of his dedication to the missionary cause by his mother and of her 
words, " Oh, how little did I know what it was going to cost," 
when she received the letter informing her that he had decided to 
enter the foreign field. His father, Mr. Richards said, when his 
son told him of his intention to enter the missionary work was at 
a loss to know what reply to make, but finally summoned together 
several friends and asked their counsel and prayer. And the 
story has been handed down, though Mr. Richards could not 
vouch for its authenticity, that one brother began his prayer 



THE HERO OF THE HAYSTACK. 215 

something like .this: ''0 Father! Brother Mills has dedicated 
his son to foreign missions and now he is mad because he wants 
to go." 

The life of the son in academy and college, the prayer meetings 
about the college campus, and the haystack meeting, when the 
five young men sought shelter from the storm under a haystack 
in Sloane meadow, and while the lightning flashed and thunder 
roared pledged themselves to foreign missions, followed by a 
prayer of which missions was the subject, were told, with interest- 
ing illustrations, including pictures of three of the men at the hay- 
stack meeting, the old college campus, and Mission Park. Then 
came the organization of the " Brethren," which was continued in 
Andover Theological Seminary, where Mills went after leaving 
Williams, and, finally, the meeting of the fathers in the Tabernacle 
Church, in Salem, where the first five missionaries were ordained. 
A good picture was shown of this service, with the fathers per- 
forming the ordination service. 

Mr. Richards then described Mills' western trips and related 
the great work which he did, encountering many hardships and 
discouragements, but never faltering in his purpose. The territory 
which he traversed, going south to New Orleans and north to 
Philadelphia, was shown by a map thrown on the canvas. It was 
while on these trips that Mills became greatly interested in the 
cause of the Negro, and when the American Colonization Society 
was formed, and it was decided to send representatives to Africa 
to select a place suitable for the establishment of a colony, Mills 
asked that he might be one of the men. His selection followed 
and he set out with Professor Burgess for the work. 

Like all of his previous work, the mission to Africa was carefully 
performed, notwithstanding the great dangers and perils that were 
encountered, not the least of which was the malarial fever so 
common in that country. Mills was not of strong physique, 
having left his native land with a threatening cough, which was 
nothing more or less than the old-fashioned consumption, and 
when he left Africa on his return trip his health began to fail and 
before his home land was reached he passed away and his body 
was buried at sea. 

The concluding portion of the lecture described this scene, and 
summed up the results of Mills' devotion. 

'' Just as the sun was sinking in the west the stalwart sailors 
bore on deck all that was mortal of Samuel J. Mills. Then with 



216 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

tears in their eyes they lowered his body into the deep as Professor 
Burgess read the funeral service. Ever since that night the 
waves of old ocean have been moaning out a ceaseless requiem 
to his memory and have been carrying his influence to ^ the 
remotest corner of this ruined world.' 

" Only twelve years from the haystack to that grave in the 
North Atlantic! Only thirty-five years old when his career is 
ended, — when most men have just begun. No! not ended, for 
that life, filled to the brim with usefulness then, has had an ever- 
widening and deepening circle of influence. Truly, ' we live in 
deeds, not years.' 

" Up in the village cemetery in Torringford stands a monument 
to his memory, erected by his sister Florella. There sleep the 
grand old father and the loving mother. In the house near by 
his father had received the letter that brought the sad news of 
his death. But when two brother ministers came there, a few 
days later, with a message of condolence, the old man cut them 
short as he burst out: ' Oh, my mercies! oh, my mercies, to have 
such a son to be a missionary! ' For more than thirty years 
after Mills' death the location of the haystack remained unknown, 
in spite of the efforts of President Griffin and others to locate it. 
It was in 1854 that Byram Green, of Sodus, N. Y., one of the five 
present at the original haystack meeting, being in Williamstown 
on a visit, located the spot. He was aided in locating the place 
by the existence of part of the maple grove, still standing, in which 
they were accustomed to meet. 

" At commencement, 1854, the college voted to purchase the 
ground surrounding the spot, including the maple grove. The 
plot consisted of ten acres, and the purchase price was twenty-five 
hundred dollars, one tenth of which was pledged by the under- 
graduates. ' Mission Park,' as it was henceforth to be known, was 
dedicated August 5, 1856, as near the fiftieth anniversary as 
possible. The principal address was made by Prof. Albert Hop- 
kins, though many speakers of many denominations participated 
in the great missionary jubilee which was held. 

" No monument marked the exact spot of the haystack until 
1867, when Harvey Rice, friend and classmate of Mark Hopkins, 
erected the now noted Haystack Monument. At its dedication, 
Mark Hopkins, then in his prime, delivered the dedicatory address, 
beginning: ' For once in the history of the world a prayer meeting 
is commemorated by a monument.' Ninety-one years after the 



THE HERO OF THE HAYSTACK. 217 

first haystack meeting, the World's Student Christian Federation 
gathered for its second meeting at WilHamstown. Men were 
gathered there from all quarters of the globe. A Japanese student 
presided. There were 3'oung men not onh" from France and 
Germany, Holland and Switzerland, but also from India, China, 
and South Africa. One evening these representatives from thir- 
teen countries and five continents gathered around this monu- 
ment. The story of that prayer meeting was graphically told. 
Then each young man in his own mother tongue, so strangely 
different in sound, but of the same spirit, cried out, ' We can do 
it if we will.' Then the Germans sang ' Ein' feste Burg ist unser 
Gott/ and as the meeting closed this company of students from 
many lands and of many tongues, but so strangely united around 
this sacred spot, marched away singing, ' Onward, Christian 
Soldiers.' The listener could but feel that though the body of 
the soldier who first uttered that battle cry lay buried in a name- 
less grave in a trackless ocean, his soul was marching on." 

List of stereopticon slides used by the lecturer: 

Litchfield Count}^; First Law School in United States; Lyman 
Beecher; Birt.hplace of H. W. Beecher; Birthplace of Ethan Allen; 
Birthplace of John Brown; John BroT^n; Site of Old Torringford 
Church; Site of Samuel J. Mills' Birthplace; Birthplace of Brain- 
erd; Connecticut Evangelical Magazine; Morris Academy; Woods 
in Torrington; James Morris; Church at Morris; Williamstown; 
Williams College ; Mills' Farm ; President E. D. Griffin; Rev. 
Amner R. Robbins; Mills' Account with the College. 

Old West College: Maple Grove, where Haystack Meeting was 
held; Site of the Haystack; James Richards; F. L. Robbins; 
Harvey Loomis; Mission Park; Bardwell House, where prayer 
meetings were continued; Torrey's Woods; Greylock; Andover 
Seminary; Adoniram Judson; Samuel Newell; The Brethren; 
Neesima ; Dr. Samuel Worcester; Ordination of the First Mission- 
aries; James Richards' Grave; Scene near James Richards' Grave; 
Obookiah. 

Foreign Missionary School; Obookiah's Grave; Mills' Home 
Missionary Journey; Mills' Signature; Mills' Desk; Andrew 
Jackson; Mills' Journal; Sylvester Lamed; Mills' Compass; 
Taking Possession of New Orleans, 1803; Africa; Sunset on the 
Atlantic; Mills' Monument at Torringford; Mission Park (Sloane's 
meadow); Haystack Monument (old cut); Mission Park and 
Monument; Haystack Monument; Thompson Memorial Chapel. 



EARTH'S GIRDLE OF PRAISE. 

The day thou gavest, Lord, is ended; 

The darkness falls at thy behest; 
To thee our morning hymns ascended, 

Thy praise shall hallow now our rest. 

We thank thee that thy Church unsleeping, 

While earth rolls onward into light, 
Through all the world her watch is keeping. 

And rests not now by day or night. 

As o'er each continent and island 

The dawn leads on another day, 
The voice of prayer is never silent, 

Nor dies the strain of praise away. 

The sun, that bids us rest, is waking 

Our brethren 'neath the western sky. 
And hour by hour fresh lips are making 

Thy wondrous doings heard on high. 

So be it. Lord; thy throne shall never 
Like earth's proud empires, pass away; 

But stand, and rule, and grow, forever. 
Till all thy creatures own thy sway. 

— John Ellerton, 1870. 

[Taken from the " Pilgrim Hymnal " by permission of the [Congregational Sunday 
School and Publishing Society.] 



SERVICES OF THE THIRD DAY, 

Thursday, October 11, 1906, 

AT THE METHODIST CHURCH, 
NORTH ADAMS, MASS. 



The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions 
was formed " for the purpose of devising ways and means, and 
adopting and prosecuting measures '^ for promoting the spread 
of the gospel in heathen lands. Five commissioners from Massa- 
chusetts and four from Connecticut " were to adopt their own 
form of organization and make their own rules and regulations." 

(General Association of Massachusetts, 1810.) 



*' God works in all things, all obey 

His first propulsion from the night; 
Wake thou and watch! The world is gray 
With morning light. 

"Aid the dawTiing, tongue and pen; 
Aid it, hopes of honest men ; 
Aid it paper, aid it type; 
Aid it, for the hour is ripe." 

[Taken from *' Christian Missions and Social Progress, ' Vol. III.] 



THURSDAY SESSIONS. 221 



MEETING OF THURSDAY MORNING. 

All the regular sessions on Thursday were held at North 
Adams and in the Methodist church. The strains of " Holy, Holy, 
Holy/' opened the morning -devotions, led by Rev. George F. 
Pentecost, D.D., who made a brief address. President Capen 
was in the chair. One of the most important episodes of any of 
these meetings took place at this time. It was the appearance of 
spokesmen for the United Brethren and Methodist Protestant 
churches, bringing greetings and messages in furtherance of the 
proposed church union between those bodies and the Congrega- 
tional denomination. Bishop Bell, of the United Brethren, gave 
the reasons for such union as they have been stated to the churches. 
His announcement met with enthusiastic applause, and its effect 
was heightened by the address of Dr. T. J. Ogburn, speaking for 
the Methodist Protestants. Prof. Edward C. Moore, D.D., of 
Harvard University, chairman of the Prudential Committee of 
the American Board, met these advances with a cordial response. 
Dr. William H. Ward and Dr. Gladden still further encouraged the 
growing feeling in favor of this union; the former by prayer for 
its success, and the latter b}^ offering resolutions (found in the 
report of the afternoon session) which favored the joining of forces 
in missionary work even in advance of the proposed federation. 

The remainder of this morning session was devoted to reports 
and addresses upon the Foreign and Home Department and 
Treasurer's reports. An address was made also by Rev. Walter 
T. Currie, of West Africa. 



OPENING ADDRESS. 
Rev. George F. Pentecost, D.D. 

There are two theories of foreign missions: First, the old idea 
that the world is a sinking ship, and that it is the business of the 
missionary to get hold of as many of the passengers and crew as 
possible, and save them from destruction. This is the theory of 
the individual. 

There is a larger and broader theory now coming into use, that 
missionarv work is for the whole world. The cosmic relation of 



222 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

Jesus Christ is to be more emphasized, and" rightly. He is the 
hght that hghteth every man that cometh into the world. Preach- 
ing the gospel for testimony, as well as for conversion, is a part 
of our work. The epistles are devoted to the getting of the gospel 
to the whole world. The whole New Testament, taking up the 
work of the prophets, is devoted to the extension of this idea. 

God now commands men everywhere to repent. We Anglo- 
Saxons are in danger of thinking that we are the whole people, 
and that the heathen are people whom we are graciously honoring 
by sending them a vest-pocket edition of the gospel. But in 
reality we are but little removed from heathen and savage ances- 
tors ourselves, and have no right to assume this position of superi- 
ority. 

We have something else to do than to bring about the conversion 
of a man here and there. There is something to do with that part 
of the world that we do not convert in the evangelical sense. No 
statistics can tabulate the work that is being done by foreign 
missions. It is largely the creation of an atmosphere, the bringing 
about of conditions. 

We are trying to export a Christian civilization to the Eastern 
world. The peoples resent our trying to force our Western civi- 
lization upon them. They may assimilate a part of it, but they 
do not want to adopt it as a whole. It can hardly be said that 
Western civihzation, in the shape of commercial methods, and 
ships of war, and opium trade, is Christianity. 

There is a great antagonism between the Eastern and Western 
methods of commerce. Our statesmen are trying to force our 
methods upon the East, but they are not successful. The gospel of 
Jesus Christ is the only thing that can bridge the chasm between 
the two civilizations and bring God and the true light to the 
consciousness of the pagan people, who have a civilization older, 
and, in many respects, better than ours, and in some respects the 
rival of ours. The evangel of Western nations and of Western 
commerce is selfish. They go to get. We go to give. Ours is a 
spiritual and heaven-sent gospel against the material and selfish 
gospel — if it is a gospel — of the Western civilization. 



GREETING FROM THE UNITED BRETHREN. 223 



GREETING FROM THE UNITED BRETHREN. 
Bishop William M. Bell, D.D. 

Mr. President, Fathers, and Brethren: It affords me an unspeak- 
able pleasure to bring to you the hearty congratulations of the 
two hundred and seventy thousand members of the United 
Brethren in Christ and the Foreign Missionary Society of our 
denomination. This celebration of the one hundredth anniver- 
sary of the Haystack Prayer Meeting has a significant message for 
all the churches of America, and they feel called upon to pause 
and consider what the Spirit would now say to the churches 
through that historic event. American Christianity may well 
gather with you about the Haystack Monument and take upon 
her heart afresh the lessons afforded by the life and service of the 
distinguished men who gave a good and sufficient reason for the 
appearance of such a monument on the campus of Williams 
College. Inspired and led on by such noble types of manhood, 
the American Board has well wrought in the actualization of the 
high ideals that dominated their lives. You have reincarnated 
their noble passion for the spiritual elevation of humanity. You 
have belted the globe with the radiance, light, and hope which 
fell full upon their lives. What they would have done, but could 
not, because of their limitations, you have hastened to do, with 
the ever-increasing facilities afforded by God's advancing provi- 
dence. As a denomination, we have not forgotten that in West 
Africa, from your sister society, the American Missionary Asso- 
ciation, we fell heir, by mutual consent, to work in that territory 
which had been begun by your people, and that in turning it over 
to us you generously followed it with your funds until we could 
adjust our own shoulders to the added burden. By virtue of 
your larger patronage and wealth you have gone bravely on in 
the great work of Christianizing the un-Christianized portions of 
the race, far in advance of our humble contribution to the world's 
evangelization. We have never lost sight of your banners, and 
we now glory in your success. This occasion has the most thrilling 
interest, and we now bare our hearts with yours to receive the 
lessons and inspirations that fitly come to us at such an hour. 

One cannot advance a half hour in the study of the Haystack 
Band without feeling the call to deeper personal religious experi- 



224 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

ence. In a large part of the Christian world there is an appalling 
spiritual deadness. In many places the masses are adrift in 
maddening spiritual desolation. Much is said about brotherhood 
while hatred rages. In far too many localities the church is like 
a great steamship tied up at the wharf with the fires banked. 
We need the anointing by the Holy Ghost. Our pulpits must 
flame, for blazing pulpit fires mean great days for Christianity. 
The Church needs impulse, power, and passion. 

We fondly hope that on this historic occasion we may be able 
with you to install afresh in the very heart of our denominational 
life the full powered forces of experimental Christianity. We 
crave the rush of redemptive joy, the enduement by the Holy 
Spirit, the new perspective of life, the vital relation Godward, 
the complete dominance of the Christian motives, all proceeding 
from our ascended and glorified Lord. Faith and love are ever 
assuring us that Christianity is a vivid personal relation to a 
personal God. Our haystack brothers demonstrated the fact that 
Christianity is a life of immortal energies and tremendous poten- 
cies. They were inspired by the flow of spiritual gladness, and 
were made ardent in their service by the glow of the divine love. 
From them we may learn the value of deep religious experience, 
as also that the inner experience demonstrates itself in the outer 
life, that it registers itself in the lives that are held up and sus- 
tained in this empire of gracious supernatural forces. 

We may safely emulate the fervency manifest by Dr. Worcester, 
the first secretary of this Board, when on a certain occasion he 
said: " I bless God for making Litchfield County "; or that of 
the great-grandfather of Samuel J. Mills, who, when asked how, in 
his limited circumstances, he could send four sons to Yale, 
answered: " With the help of Almighty God and my wife." 
Samuel J. Mills passed under pungent conviction for sin and into 
God's gracious kingdom by a definite experience of the divine 
renewal. He was able to cry out: " glorious sovereignty! " 

His was a strenuous religious experience. His mother tearfully 
said: " But little did I know when I dedicated this child to God 
what it was going to cost and whereunto it would end. How little 
I knew what it was going to cost! " 

Now, after the heartiest felicitation on account of the growing 
ability of your great Board to serve humanity as you also serve 
Jesus Christ, permit a concluding word as to what is suggested 
naturally by the presence on this platform of us who represent 



GREETING FROM THE UNITED BRETHREN. 225 

two bodies of Christians who have not been associated in the work 
you have so nobly carried forward for so long a time. Your 
speaker most heartily desires this because: 

1. The reasons or occasions for separate organic existence have 
in many cases ceased to be. 

2. The tendency to multiply denominations in the United 
States has had its day, and an ample indulgence. 

3. Any denomination may reach the stage in its history when, 
having made its contribution to truth and experience, it may, 
under changed circumstances, honorably discontinue its separate 
existence and acknowledge in a formal way its kinship with other 
bodies of Christians. 

4. Any denomination may go to seed in the advocacy of usages 
and peculiarities which, however good and proper at the time 
of their being called into existence, may have come to be barnacles 
and impediments under changed conditions. 

5. Our divisions have led us to magnify non-essentials, with a 
corresponding loss in the fundamentals. 

6. The exigencies of the hour call for the most advantageous 
use of all Christian resources. 

7. The age, being utilitarian, has no capacity for enthusiasm 
over the institution of a new denomination for the gratification of 
somebody's ambition for leadership, or for any other reason. 

8. A very high grade of influence, efficiency, and enthusiasm is 
coming into being through the different interdenominational 
movements and organizations. 

9. The needless duplication of church organizations in the same 
community is becoming a stumbling block and a menace to 
Christian efficiency. 

10. A deserved doom is passing upon everything unfruitful in 
church and state. 

11. American church life needs, just now, a consuming and 
intensified passion for the essentials of Christianity. 

12. Either an exalted spiritual consciousness of the presence of 
a great calamity, or the near approach of a great peril, or the 
appeal of a great enterprise, invariably suggests and points toward 
the heartier and closer affiliation of all Christians. 

13. Unholy rivalry, strife, and hatred among church people 
grieve the Holy Spirit and forbid extensive revivals. 

14. In part, our divisions stand for a want of love, of deep and 
genuine Christian experience. 



226 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

15. The whole tendency of the age is to unification, much 
business, and not too much bookkeeping for the business; elimi- 
nation of waste and leakage, with prodigious pushing for large 
things. 

16. An inexorable demand that the highest, holiest, and best in 
the keeping of the race anywhere shall be universalized at the 
earliest possible moment. 

We can but feel, as we confront the mighty task of making Christ 
known to all the inhabitants of the earth in the present genera- 
tion, that the glorious goal will be brought so much nearer by the 
happy and businesslike unification of missionary societies and the 
coordination of the missionary forces. We long for a great 
Christian militant forward movement for the speedy evangeli- 
zation of the world even in our day. May God bring it to pass 
for his own glory. Amen. 



GREETING FROM THE METHODIST PROTESTAXTS. 227 

GREETING FROM THE METHODIST PROTESTANTS. 
Rev. T. J. Ogburn, D.D. 

Mr. President: I am fifty-six years old, and it is remarkable that 
the first time that I have ever been permitted to worship in a 
Congregational chmxh I have found it to be a Methodist meeting- 
house. But somehow I feel at home among you. Dr. William 
Hayes Ward visited one of our conferences and I heard him with 
great delight, and after he heard me make one of the most ridicu- 
lous speeches I ever made in my life he actually hugged me. 
Later, I addressed the union missionary meeting in Dayton, Ohio, 
and Dr. Creegan heard me talk on missions and he hugged me. 
So I am beginning to feel at home with the Congregational body. 

I feel unable and unworthy to bring fully the greetings of the 
Methodist Protestant Church to you, but, as the slender dull wire 
may flash along its line the light and the power and the energy 
and the intelligence communicated to it, so I may speak today 
plainly and simply for the Methodist Protestant Church. As the 
tiniest dew-drop may reflect the light of the sun, so God may 
help me to tell you something about the love of the Methodist 
Protestant Church for you. 

I should rejoice if I could just tell you what I believe to be the 
real situation as to the attitude of our church toward yours. It 
is my duty, as secretary and treasurer of our board of foreign 
missions, to visit all our charges and churches, and I think I 
know the heart of the Methodist Protestant denomination. 
There is an overwhelming sentiment in favor of the union that 
has been referred to. But, while I came to bring you these greet- 
ings, I did not come to talk to you about foreign missions. For a 
minister of any other denomination to come to Congregationalists 
and talk about foreign missions seems to me somewhat like haul- 
ing coal to Newcastle. You do not need any talk from me about 
foreign missions, and I have not come to talk to you about your 
history, for you know that better than I do. But you don't 
know much about the Methodist Protestant Church, because 
instead of writing history we have been very hard at work trying 
^to make some. We have not spoken of ourselves, perhaps, as 
we ought; we have been too timid, too retiring, too modest. But 
I should rather go back to my people, my brethren, and carry to 



228 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

them the inspiration, the information, the zeal, the enthusiasm,, 
the foreign missionary spirit which I have inbibed here, and diffuse 
that among the Methodist Protestants than even to bring you 
the glad greetings from our people. Oh, I do wish you could 
come down into the Methodist Protestant Church, and wake us 
up. We need you and we are going to get you. 

I shall never forget how I felt in the committee room in Dayton,. 
Ohio, when the report of the committee on creed was first read 
by your great Dr. McKenzie. I looked around upon the com- 
pany composing that committee and I could see the tears glisten- 
ing in their eyes. I saw their faces flush as if their hearts were 
inspired with unspeakable joy. It seems to me the very atmos- 
phere trembled with the power and presence of the spirit of God, 
I thought of the upper room in the Pentecost season, and I felt 
that we who sometimes were afar off were made nigh by the blood 
of Christ. In that creed was something like this statement: 
" We believe that God has appointed his Church to make known 
his gospel to all mankind." Brethren, on that we can unite, if 
on nothing else. Nothing can ever unite the different forces of 
God's people like the purpose to carry out some great and all- 
engaging and all-worthy enterprise. I believe these United 
States would never have been these United States but for the ter- 
rible pressure of some outside foe, and the people of that day had 
to hang together to keep from being hanged separately. Some- 
thing like that must bring us together in the cause of Jesus Christ. 

I am glad that our denomination knows how pleased you were 
to hear our great and good Dr. Stephens at your council in Des 
Moines, a year or so ago. Your glad appreciation of his wise 
remarks has been made known to all our people, and we are very 
glad to find that you Congregationalists certainly know a good 
thing when you hear it. We appreciate your appreciation of our 
brother. 

As I say, on this great work of foreign missions we shall unite as 
perhaps on nothing else. We shall be workers together with God 
sooner than we shall be behevers together as to doctrine. Those 
women of whom the apostle wrote had some difficulties with each 
other, and there were contentions, but they labored together help- 
ing him in the gospel. You may put four boys into a room by 
themselves, each with a jack-knife, and they may swap knives all 
day and every day one will have made a dollar and a quarter clear 
money, it is said, when they come out in the evening. So all of 



GREETIXG FROM THE METHODIST PROTESTANTS. 229 

the theologists in the world may get together and argue doctrine 
and discuss doctrine, but every one will come out at last believing 
in his own doctrine more firmly than when he went in. But, 
brethren, if we go to work to save a lost world, we have to get 
together; we shall unite. Never will the Methodist Protestants 
find the Congregationalists and the United Brethren, never shall 
ive find our brethren, until we go and seek our lost brother, and 
there we shall find one another. 

I am very sorry to tell you, dear friends, that the history of the 
Methodist Protestant Church in regard to foreign missions is not 
very delightful reading. I should be so glad if I could fully con- 
done our failure, but I know not how to do so. I beg you to 
remember, however, that we are not a wealthy church; that we 
are made up largely of rural communities. We have farmers in 
our denomination who would board a preacher with a large 
family a solid month rather than pay twenty-five dollars a year to 
spread the gospel of Jesus Christ. We have some of the best 
people in the world. I believe our Methodist Protestant Church 
is the very cream of all the churches, but this cream sometimes 
needs churning. After all, you Congregationalists haven't got a 
great deal to brag of. You were two hundred and eight years old, 
I believe, when the Methodist Protestant Church was born. Your 
board of missions is eighteen years older than our denomination. 
Congregationalism was one hundred and ninety years old when 
the American Board was formed. We have done more in the 
seventy-eight years of our history than you Congregational 
brethren did in one hundred and ninety years of your history. 
We are in the early stage of church development. There are 
three stages of church life: Derived life, sustained life, imparted 
life. We Methodist Protestants have had to work like everything 
to keep ourselves going. One trouble with us is that we have been 
trying to convert the Methodist Episcopal Church to our theory 
of government, and no sensible teacher on earth ever had duller 
students than we have had. Not long ago I was in a company 
of bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and I told them I 
was surprised that men of such intelligence and good sense could 
not see our government in a better light, and they actually laughed 
at me. We seem to be making very little impression on them, 
but I am glad to say that every change they have made in their 
form of government is toward the form used by the Methodist 
Protestant, the Congregational, and the United Brethren churches. 



230 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

I think the most pregnant theological passage I have ever seen 
outside the Bible is this: " Jesus died not only to save men, but 
to make them worth saving/' and I should like to add to that the 
further statement, " and to make them saving." A great many 
of us have been trying to keep ourselves saved, and the churches 
in these United States are giving $320,000,000 a year to keep 
themselves saved and about $8,000,000 a year to save the 826,000,- 
000 of heathen; that is to say, we consider ourselves forty times 
more needy of the gospel than the heathen! Our church work 
has been laid too much along the line of making people see the 
importance and beauty of our government. 

Another thing, we are a poor people. In 1828, — less than one 
hundred years ago, — our church was born, and, brethren, we 
were born out of doors. The Methodist Episcopal people found 
that we were incorrigible and very recalcitrant children, and so 
they said, " You must do better or get out." We did better — 
and got out. We didn't have a home. We had nowhere to lay 
our heads. No foot of land did we possess, nor cottage in the 
wilderness. We had to go to work to take care of ourselves. 
What could we do for the poor heathen away yonder when we 
were so helpless and poor in this country? But from this small 
beginning and this poor origin we have grown — this Benjamin 
of the Methodist Israel — from a handful of corn in the earth upon 
the top of the mountains, without any church home, without a 
cent of church property, and with none of this world's goods, to 
a membership of one hundred and eighty-seven thousand, with 
nearly seven million dollars' worth of church property, with a 
thousand members in Japan, and sixty thousand dollars' worth of 
property there. 

Some time ago I dreamed really that a member of the Methodist 
Protestant Church was arguing against union with the Congre- 
gationalists. When I referred him to the great foreign missionary 
work the Congregationalists were doing, he said, " 1 can't see how 
it would hurt our denomination to unite with a denomination 
doing such a great work for the heathen world." He was a 
sensible Methodist Protestant. Some time ago I attended a 
meeting in Indiana where a United Brethren minister brought a 
very high stack of books in order to prove that the Congre- 
gationalists were Calvinists and that we ought not to unite with 
them. Brethren, I don't know whether you are Calvinists or 
not, but this is the illustration that I use. I say, here I am in a 



GREETING FROM THE METHODIST PROTESTANTS. 231 

deep pit, unable to get out, and every effort I make to extricate 
myself sinks me deeper in the mire. There come to the top of 
that pit a Calvinist and a Methodist Protestant. The Calvinist 
says, '' I believe it was foreordained from all eternity that Ogburn 
should never get out of that pit." The Methodist Protestant, 
with great tears of joy, shouts, ''Glory to God, I believe that God 
foreordained the possible salvation of every soul under heaven," 
and he takes it out in shouting. But the Calvinist says, '' While 
I believe that it was foreordained that Ogburn never should get 
out of that pit, I believe it was foreordained from all eternity that 
I should do my level best to get him out," and down comes the 
rope and up I come ! Give me the Calvinist every time if he only 
loves God and does his best to save mankind. I want to go back 
to our Methodist Protestant people, and tell them how orthodox 
you are, how reverent you are, and how you can pray; — I have 
heard no better praying since I used to attend Negro prayer 
meetings in the South! 

Brethren, j^ou lost a great missionary about one hundred years 
ago, but God in his providence gathered up the fragments and 
there were more than tweh'e basketfuls of foreign missionary 
influence distributed throughout the Baptist denomination. Oh, 
I wonder, before God, what will become of the Methodist Prot- 
estant Church when you all shall join us! I think it will leaven 
the whole lump. 



232 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 



RESPONSE TO THE GREETINGS FROM THE UNITED 
^ BRETHREN AND THE METHODIST 

I - PROTESTANTS. 

Rev. Edward C. Moore, D.D., of Harvard University, 
Chairman of the Prudential Committee of the American Board. 

Mr. President, Representatives of the Church of the United 
Brethren and of the Methodist Protestant Church, Brethren and 
Friends of the American Board: One of these bodies of Christians 
here represented had its origin in dissent from the principles of 
government of the Methodist church. The ground of that dissent 
has just been described for us in more vivid terms than I should 
have found it possible to use. Now we perceive the fitness in the 
approach of this body to the Congregationalists and of the Con- 
gregationalists to this body. We also might be said, at one period 
in our history, in our relation to that which was for us the mother 
church,^' to have done a better thing, and got out." And now it 
is possible for both these brethren and ourselves to do the best 
thing of all, and to get together. 

The representative of the Methodist Protestant body has made 
touching allusion to the smallness of the achievement, thus far, 
of his beloved church in the matter of foreign missions. One 
who reads the history of our West and Southwest seeks no 
apology from the men of this communion. He knows that a vast 
expanse of our own country, once the frontier of the gospel as 
truly as are the foreign lands the frontiers of the gospel in our day, 
is at this moment the territory of Christian communities in no 
small measure because of what these brave and faithful men and 
women did under the banner of the Methodist Protestant Church. 
[f they come to us today asking to join with us in this enthusiasm 
for the foreign work, it surely becomes us to recognize them as 
brethren and most efficient helpers in the no less great and pressing 
task of our home field which, in the meetings of the American 
Board, must never be forgotten. 

The other of these bodies which sends us, through its bishop, 
greeting this morning is descended in the line of the great Pietist 
and Moravian tradition to which the whole Church of God on 
earth owes such an inestimable debt in this matter of foreign 



RESPONSE TO GREETINGS. 233 

missions. This church also has done in heroic fashion the task 
immediately before it in the winning of the South and West. 
They, too, have done that which their time asked of them. And 
now we ask that they join us in the doing of a world-wide task 
which the new time demands of us all. We are not unmindful 
of the debt which our own church owes to those revivals so closely 
associated through Wesley and Whitefield, not to say through 
the men of the Great Awakening, with the religious impulse of 
the Pietists and Moravian church. 

It is fitting, too, that, cherishing the highest hope concerning 
this new interdenominational union, we should meet thus upon 
the platform of -the American Board. For does not the very 
name of the American Board betray the fact that when it began 
its missionary career it meant to be more than a denominational 
body? Was it not for two generations more than a denomina- 
tional body? Did it not draw to itself the consecrated men and 
women and the devout gifts of other churches than our own? 
Did it not at one time bid fair to be the organization of united 
American Christianity for this great task? The different churches, 
with their denominational boards, have had their mission. But 
of one thing I am assured, that we shall then best face the issue 
of our time, whether here in our own country or abroad, when we 
return to our own splendid tradition as an American Board and 
to the hope of an American church; when we seek to forget the 
divisions which have grown up among us and to realize once more 
the common bond and the common obligation. Without for one 
moment asking other men to yield convictions which are precious 
to them, and without yielding convictions which are precious to 
us, we rejoice that we may be thus united in the great work which 
God in the opening of this new century of foreign missions sets 
before us all. 

Therefore, permit me to return in fullest measure and on behalf 
of all, the greetings which these messengers of the churches have 
brought. Let me express on behalf of this Board and of the de- 
nomination our own confidence concerning this issue, and let us 
lift with these brethren an earnest prayer to God for his blessing 
both upon them and upon us in the great work which is waiting. 



234 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 



REPORT BY THE COMMITTEE ON THE REPORT OF THE 
FOREIGN DEPARTMENT. 

Rev. Raymond Calkins, Chairman; Read by 
Rev. G. H. EwiNG. 

Your committee to whom has been assigned the task of review- 
ing the printed reports for the year upon the various missions of 
the Board report on the interest and pleasure with which the task 
has been performed, and submit certain considerations as a result 
of this review, as follows: 

We have been impressed with the high level of Christian per- 
sonality among the missionaries. The unconscious spirit and 
atmosphere of these reports is that of sober courage, quiet persist- 
ency of endeavor, undaunted zeal and godliness among the 
missionaries, alike of the medical and the evangelistic staffs. The 
bravery and loyalty of the women, as brought out in the report 
of the Umzumbe Home, in the Zulu Mission, is reflected every- 
where. 

We note, also, the ready adaptability of the workers to changed 
conditions, as evidenced in the reports. Everywhere in heathen 
lands history is making fast, and the new emphasis upon edu- 
cational work, the improvement of equipment and curriculum to 
meet an awakening heathendom, show a fine initiative and energy 
on the part of our undermanned, underpaid missionaries. The 
splendid native work being encouraged everywhere, except where 
severe home retrenchments are making it impossible, is another 
illustration of the progressive attitude of the force. 

We note, again, as a most encouraging feature of these reports, 
the increasing spirit of cooperation and alliance for the protection 
and furthering of common interests among the variously denomi- 
nated mission stations on the field. The power of organized effort 
is being made increasingly apparent in such missions as that of 
Ceylon, with its great group of native helpers, and that of the 
Marathi Mission, which, in the face of prohibitive and cruel 
retrenchments, is conducting a progressive and increasing work. 

But it seems to your committee that the reports indicate that 
the men on the field are doing better than the men and churches 
at home. Our support is not commensurate with their efficiency 



THE WORK OF THE FOREIGN DEPARTMENT. 235 

and devotion. The need of reenforcements is everywhere seriously 
apparent. Some of the missionaries are breaking down; all are 
meeting increased opportunities and demands upon their time 
and strength. 

It seems clear, from the reports, that we are approaching a 
crisis in European Turkey, Eastern Turkey, the Madura and 
Marathi missions in India, and in the Chinese and African missions. 
More men and more means are tragically needed. Where, as in 
the Eastern Turkey Mission, the country is declining and poverty 
is increasing, the need of better home support is most imperative. 
It is a lamentable fact that in several of the missions the reduction 
in grants for native work, necessitated by the policy of the Board 
and the failure of the home churches, has seriously impaired the 
force and efficiency of the native corps of workers. It seems to 
your committee a crying shame that for the lack of a few dollars 
men in large numbers, already trained at the expense of the 
Board, must needs be sent adrift when their education is finished. 
It is at once suicidal to real success and demoralizing to the men. 

The reports are a revelation of splendid and heroic effort. Let 
us meet the needs as well here as the missionaries meet them there. 



THE WORK OF THE FOREIGN DEPARTMENT. 

Rev. Raymond Calkins, of Portland, Me. 

Your committee has been asked to review the report of the 
various missions of the American Board and to report to you the 
impressions which the reading of these reports have made upon 
them. I would like to tell you how a study of these reports has 
impressed me with the way in which the work of this Board is 
leveling up to the great, accepted modern principles of foreign 
missionary endeavor. And I would like to give you a few con- 
crete instances out of these reports to illustrate how the whole 
management and prosecution of this world-wide design is based 
upon these well-understood principles, which have been evolved 
out of the experience of a century in the work of foreign missions. 

Supreme Purpose of Missions. 

The first principle of foreign missionary endeavor is the purpose 
of evangelization, in which this Board was conceived and to which 
for one hundred vears it has been dedicated. And the members 



236 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

and supporters of this Board have the right to ask, ^' Is the great 
purpose of evangehzing this world for our Lord Jesus Christ and 
bringing the knowledge of Jesus home to every human heart and 
soul the supreme object and purpose of this great missionary 
board? " Now no one can read these reports without being 
impressed with the way in which the evangelistic spirit flames up 
warm in the breast of every missionary who has been commissioned 
by this Board and the way in which the spirit of evangelization 
today possesses every mission of the American Board. In the 
midst of difficulties which it is very hard for us to comprehend, 
in their isolation from such centers as these of spiritual oppor- 
tunity and of quickening, feeling as they do the reflex influence 
of the un-Christian aspects of our Western civilization, depressed 
as they are by the awful reductions in material aid which are their 
lot year by year, and all around them the great multitudes of the 
yet unconverted world, they are still holding loyally to the 
purpose which ever since the apostolic days has animated the true 
followers of Jesus Christ. Almost the opening words in the 
reports from Japan are words of rejoicing for the exceptional 
spiritual opportunity, which the sobering effects of the great war 
and the tenderness of human hearts after personal bereavement 
and the efficient work done by the agents of the Young Men's 
Christian Associations in the soldier camps have opened up before 
the mission fields of Japan; a greater spiritual opportunity, in 
the words of one of the missionaries of the mission, than has been 
known in thirty years. Almost the opening words in the report 
from the Mission in South China, which this past year has known 
a period of special difficulties and of some discouragement, are 
words of rejoicing that in this year no less than two hundred and 
seventy have been baptized into the Christian faith. Almost the 
opening words from the mission at Foochow are words of rejoicing 
that there has spread throughout that mission a real revival of 
God's gospel in the hands of their own Christian laymen. Three 
churches at Peking, in a year which had been made memorable by 
political and economic disturbances, report a net gain of 234 in the 
membership of those churches. We should have to look very far in 
this our Christian America for three churches in any one city 
which could show a similar record. From the Madura Mission 
we read that their 36 churches and 6,000 church members reported 
this year a net gain of 277 in their church membership. The 
missions in South Africa are aflame with the evangelistic spirit, 



THE WORK OF THE FOREIGN DEPARTMENT. 237 

and when we turn to the story of those far-off islands in the South 
Pacific we read that in July, 1905, the Spirit of God so wrought 
upon one of those islands that hundreds were turned to the knowl- 
edge of Jesus Christ, and one of the missionaries from that station 
writes that when one hundred young men and young women stood 
up together to be baptized into the Christian profession he felt the 
reward for years of desperate and of sometimes discouraging labor. 
If any of you have come up to this meeting with the question in 
your hearts, '' Is the American Board still prosecuting its primary 
purpose of the evangelization of this world to Jesus Christ? " 
you may be assured that the note which rings from every station 
of this missionary board is the sweet and tender note of the 
f amihar hymn : 

' ' Christ for the world we sing, 
Christ to the world we bring, 
With loving zeal." 

Use of Native Agencies. 

The second great principle of modern missionary endeavor is 
that this work of evangelization shall be prosecuted by the native 
Christians and that the foreign missionaries shall devote them- 
selves more and more to the labor of education and of supervision. 
The reasons for this are well understood by all of you, — the diffi- 
culties of securing foreigners enough to cover the whole vast terri- 
tory; the difficulty of maintaining them even if they could be 
secured; and the difficulty, even if they could be secured and main- 
tained, of any foreigners really understanding those Eastern 
populations well enough to bring the gospel of Jesus Christ home 
to them in their own language. So it has become more and more 
the pohcy of this Board not to increase the number of its foreign 
missionaries, but to increase in every possible way the number of 
its native workers. It may surprise you somewhat to be told that 
the number of men sent out from this country by the American 
Board has increased very little during the past fifty years; but 
whereas fifty years ago there were only 124 native workers in the 
field, today there are no less than 4,000. This has become the 
settled policy of the American Board. And now try to conceive 
the heroic labor and the great difficulty of evolving out of the non- 
Christian populations of the East, men and women intellectually 
strong enough to become the leaders and teachers of their people, 
who, at the same time, are willing to endure the odium which the 



238 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

acceptance of Christianity brings upon them; who are morally 
strong enough to withstand the temptations of being drawn back 
into the old life, and who are spiritually of the stuff of which 
martyrs are. made. Let anybody try to frame to himself the 
difficulties of such a proposition as that, and he would be pre- 
pared to be told that not yet have our educational institutions in 
the East been able to train and raise up a sufficient body of native 
helpers to carry on the work of this great Board. What, then, is 
his surprise when he turns to these reports to discover instead the 
tragedy of the missionary's success, — he discovers that schools 
have been so admirably equipped and coordinated and filled with 
God's Holy Spirit that they are yearly preparing more men abso- 
lutely qualified to be preachers of Christ to their own people, 
than dollars and cents can be found in opulent Christian America 
with which to support them. Could such a result as that possibly 
have been foreseen? Given the missionary sent out alone to his 
perilous and to his difficult task, and given America which in one 
hundred years was destined to accumulate more wealth than the 
whole Christian world had accumulated in the preceding eighteen 
hundred years, — could it possibly have been foreseen that the 
missionary should so have succeeded in his task as to place too 
heavy a financial burden upon his Christian brother at home? 
Yet this is precisely what we find. From every mission of this 
Board there come to us the cries of surprise and of wonder from 
those who rightly feel themselves deserted at their posts, which 
ought to fill the hearts of all of us with self-reproach. Do you 
think it is possible for us to conceive what it has meant this past 
year for the mission in Mexico to have discharged from the service, 
for want of funds, their first convert and their first ordained mis- 
sionary and a native worker who has been twenty years in their 
Christian service? Can we possibly understand what it has 
meant for the Madura Mission this past year to have dismissed 
from their service forty-three native workers who have been 
trained up by the labor of years to be teachers and preachers to 
their people? Can you possibly understand what it means for 
even a man of Dr. Hume's magnificant courage and undaunted 
spirit to see a boy whom he has educated for fifteen consecutive 
years, until he graduates at last from the theological school, ready 
to go as a messenger to his people, dismissed from the service 
because fifty dollars cannot be found in all America to commis- 
sion him for his Christ like task? I believe it to be impossible 



THE WORK OF THE FOREIGN DEPARTMENT. 239 

for anybody to understand just what this means for the foreign 
missionary. 

But let me tell you what it means to us. Such a policy as this 
means absolutely the halting of the forward movement to win 
this world for Christ. Retrenchment strikes first at the native 
arm of the service. It means that villages are abandoned, that 
outstations are surrendered, that preaching to non-Christian 
adults is discontinued. It means that the missionaries are forced 
to devote their efforts to the educating of the already Christian 
community. I feel that if these facts could be brought home to 
the intelligence and to the conscience of the American churches 
they would not suffer the forward movement of the Christian 
army to be halted, when the additional contribution by each church 
member of one street-car fare every day of the year would put 
into commission every native worker who can be trained by the 
Christian institutions of this American Board. 

A Well-Rounded Gospel. 

The third great principle of foreign missionary endeavor is 
this: That the whole gospel shall be presented to the non-Chris- 
tian world; that we shall not offer to others less of a gospel than 
we possess for ourselves; that the message of Jesus shall not be 
abbreviated, but that the whole world shall be given to under- 
stand that there is no other name by which we shall be saved, 
not only for the world that is to come, but also for the world that 
now is. And that is the complete gospel which the American 
Board today is offering to the Eastern world. It is saying to the 
sick of the palsy, as Jesus said, not only, " Thy sins be forgiven 
thee," but also, " Take up thy bed and walk." It is not only 
proclaiming the acceptable year of the Lord, and not only preach- 
ing the gospel of good tidings to the poor, but it is also literally 
opening the eyes of the blind and releasing the captive and setting 
at liberty them that are bruised. One's heart is filled with cour- 
age and even with wonder, when one opens these reports, to see 
how magnificently full-orbed the gospel is which, with such meager 
resources, the missionaries of this board are offering to the great 
non-Christian world. Does a famine break out in India? The 
missionaries of the American Board in India are not only seeking 
to train up the orphans that are left by the famine, but they are 
inventing new looms and making new provisions so that the 
people when the next famine comes shall be able to support them- 



240 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

selves. Has a famine broken out in Japan this past year? Your 
missionaries have distributed no less than one hundred and thir- 
teen thousand dollars in the work of relief, and the orphanage at 
Okayama today shelters no less than one thousand orphans. Does 
opium make terrible ravages in China? The mission at Shansi is not 
only speaking words of comfort to the sinner, but it is setting its 
face against the sin and is opening refuges whereby those who are 
the victims of this accursed habit shall be restored to a full and 
a healthful manhood. Is leprosy still the dread disease of the 
East? In two hospitals in India today there are no less than 
one hundred and eighty leprous patients. Is blindness still the 
curse of the East as it was in our Lord's day? It cheers one to 
read that the same modern inventions for the education of the 
blind, the methods of Braille and of industrial training, are being 
used also by our missionaries in the East. Is China on the eve 
of a great intellectual awakening? Nowhere in America can be 
found a finer system of free public lectures than today exists in 
Peking, conducted by the missionaries of your own Board, whereby 
the people, without regard to race or creed, are given an oppor- 
tunity to satisfy the hunger and thirst for the knowledge which 
God is wilhng everywhere to give his children. 

Now, if there is any one who says, ''All this is very beautiful, 
but all this ought to be secondary to the work of evangelization, 
ought not even to be undertaken until the world first has been 
evangelized," there are two things always to be remembered, 
first, that the medical, industrial, and educational work is essential 
to evangelization, and, secondly, that it is always accompanied 
by evangelization. It is essential to evangelization, because it is 
the God-given way whereby suspicion is being allayed and preju- 
dice is being removed and barriers are being broken down which 
still divide Christians from their Eastern neighbors. The East- 
erner may hesitate to go to a Christian chapel to worship, but he 
will go to a Christian school to be educated, he will go to an 
industrial school to be trained, and he will go to a hospital to be 
healed. '' Our college," writes one of the missionaries from India, 
''is absolutely the only place, where high-caste Hindoos and where 
Mohammedans will come together with Christians." " Our 
industrial plant," so reads a report from South Africa, " is our 
very best way of reaching the natives in this great empire." Let 
the American Board relax its work in hospitals and schools and 
industrial centers of training, and it will be relaxing its growing 



THE WORK OF THE FOREIGN DEPARTMENT. 241 

grip upon the most enlightened minds in the East. Then, too, 
it must be remembered that this work is accompanied always by 
evangelization. Not a teacher in a school but is seeking to plant 
in her pupils hearts " the wonderful words of life." Not a medi- 
cal missionary but is seeking by night and by day to cure men's 
souls with the same devotion with which he seeks to heal their 
bodies. If a hospital does not have a chapel connected with it, 
it is only for want of space. And the most significant spiritual 
awakenings which the missions have known have been in the 
Christian schools of the East. Thus it is literally true that in the 
stroke of every hammer, in the noise of every loom, and in every 
lesson that is taught can be heard by him who listens the voice 
of Jesus calling the East to himself. 

Cooperation. 

The fourth principle of modern foreign missionary endeavor is 
this: That there shall be cooperation and understanding between 
the different missionary boards in the East; for if the spectacle 
of church competition at home has become intolerable, the spec- 
tacle of missionary competition abroad has become impossible. 
The growing appreciation of the spirit of Christ and the necessary 
requirements of economy have made it absolutely indispensable 
that missionary boards should be working together; and if any 
one asks what the American Board is doing in this great work of 
cooperative Christian missions, he may find his heart filled with 
gratitude and with admiration for the policy of this Board and for 
the Christlike character of its missionaries. 

I can only give you a few specific instances of the great co- 
operative work of our American Board abroad. From Micronesia 
comes the story of how German missions are cooperating with our 
American missions in the evangelization of those islands. From 
South Africa comes the word that all the missions are planning for 
the erection of a Christian college, one college, to which shall be 
sent the graduates of all the different denominational schools. 
In India today there exists a Board of Arbitration of all the differ- 
ent missions in India, to adjudicate difficulties that may arise, 
to remove all friction, and to see that the common Christian work 
is carried forward in cooperative measure. This last yearjin 
Southern India — in July, 1905 — fifty-six accredited delegates 
came together from the missions of the London Missionary 
Society and from our Madura and Ceylon missions, and there 



242 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

formed an ecclesiastical union, with a standing committee, which 
should communicate with the synod of the United Church and 
the Presbyterian body of South India with reference to joining 
in the same union. When one opens the reports from China he 
finds stories of cooperation on every page. He finds in the South 
China mission of the American Board the missionaries uniting 
with the United Brethren in a common training school. In Foo- 
chow he discovers a Christian Revival Society which represents 
all the local mission boards. In Peking he discovers a Union 
Medical College. In Tungcho he discovers a Union Theological 
School. At Tientsin and Pao Ting-fu he discovers a careful 
delimitation of all the territory, which has included the surren- 
dering by the American Board of certain villages where the native 
Christians themselves protested against the transference to 
another mission. No one can read the story of what your mis- 
sionaries are doing abroad without believing from his heart that 
everything that can be done in a Christian way to cooperate with 
all other Christians is being done by the American Board. 

Native Christian Churches. 

And now, the last principle of modern foreign missions is 
this: It is a word which has more than once been spoken from 
this platform and for which I believe this centennial meeting 
will become memorable. It is the bold annunciation of the truth 
that foreign missions exist for the purpose, not of superimposing 
upon the East the rites, the institutions, or the formulated con- 
fessions of faith of the West, but that foreign missions exist 
for the purpose of implanting within the East the undivided 
essence of the Christian truth and then trusting to God's Holy 
Spirit to evolve out of the native Christian consciousness its own 
rites, its own institutions, and its own statements of belief. It is 
the bold proclamation that any other form of missionary endeavor 
implies essential unbelief in that one central article of our Chris- 
tian faith, "I believe in the Holy Ghost; the Holy Catholic 
Church." It means a conception of foreign missions which 
declares that they come to their own only when they cease to be 
foreign missions and become home missions. It is the assertion 
that the foreign missionary then most becomes the Christian 
missionary when in him is literally fulfilled the word of the Master 
to his servants, ^' The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over 
them; but ye shall not be so, but he that is greatest among you. 



THE WORK OF THE FOREIGN DEPARTMENT. 243 

let him be as the younger; and he that is chief, as he that doth 
serve." 

Now, when one turns to the reports from the foreign field and 
asks himself, " Are our missionaries actually carrying out so 
Christian a policy? " he finds himself touched in his inmost soul 
with a revelation of the Christ like, self-effacing, and self-subordi- 
nating Christian spirit of every missionary who dwells alone 
leagues from the place where you and I are getting our Christian 
inspiration this morning. In China he finds that the mission- 
aries are trusting the native conscience to the degree of giving to 
native missionary societies the evangelization of certain districts 
and trusting them to do it. In India he finds now that a great 
missionary society has been formed to which, it is true, foreign 
missionaries have a certain advisory relation, but to whose ex- 
ecutive committee only native Christians belong. And the 
ultimate goal of our mission work in India is indicated in these 
words from the report of the Marathi Mission: " Christianity will 
become indigenous to India only when the native Christian com- 
munity supports its own religious and educational institutions 
and sends out its own missionaries." 

But it is in the Japanese mission that we find the finest illus- 
tration of this underlying principle of foreign missions. This 
last year, for the first time, native Japanese have been elected to 
the board of overseers of Kobe College. This last year marks the 
last step toward the absolute independence of the native Japanese 
church, which assumes now the full direction and the control of the 
aided and organized churches of Japan. It means that the word 
" Kumi-ai " hereafter belongs only to the truly independent, self- 
directing, and self-supporting churches. And if one asks, " What 
do our missionaries in Japan think of this, having the work of 
their lives all taken out of their hands? " he finds his answer in 
these words of Dr. DeForest: ''These churches," he writes, 
'' have the right and the privilege and the duty of evolving, under 
the direction of God and the influence of his Holy Spirit, a Christian 
church in such ways as shall best take hold of the social and the 
national life of our beloved Japan." These words to me mark 
the highest stage, as they indicate the final goal, of the whole 
foreign missionary movement. Wlien in every nation there 
shall have been raised up a native church, grounded in the faith 
and filled with the spirit of our Lord Jesus Christ, which shall in 
its own way and by its own initiative declare the truth of the 



244 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

gospel in terms and in forms which shall best take hold of the 
social and national life of each separate land, then the day draws 
near when the vision of the apostle and the dream and longing 
of every apostolic spirit since shall be realized, when '' every 
knee shall bow, and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ 
is Lord." 

We shall all go home from this great ♦anniversary occasion 
touched in many ways, and influenced from many directions, to- 
consecrate ourselves anew to the great work of Christian missions.. 
But if one will ponder deeply, he will find that one of the strongest 
appeals that can come to him to support to the limit of his strength 
the work of the American Board, is the persuasion of the noble 
way in which these five great principles of foreign missions at 
their best are being put into constant operation in every mission 
of this Board by your servants at home, and by your beautiful 
and consecrated missionaries abroad. 



THE WEST CENTRAL AFRICA MISSION. 245 



THE WEST CENTRAL AFRICA MISSION. 
Rev. Walter T. Currie. 

The children of this Board in West Central Africa are doing 
all that mind and heart and flesh ought to undertake, or can 
wisely carry on, to extend the kingdom of their Father and Lord. 
When the sons are found enthusiastically working, the daughters 
are not idle. 

In 1880 the Board made selection of a site for the West Central 
Africa Mission. The district chosen covers an area on the high 
plateau of from one hundred to three hundred miles inland from 
the old West African coast town, Benguella, and stands at an 
altitude of about five thousand feet above the sea. The site was 
wisely selected. It certainly is not a health resort, and yet, as 
•compared with most parts of Africa, it has a salubrious cHmate, 
and white workers there have no need to spend their days in 
horrid nightmares of ill health. Its soil is capable of sustaining 
a large native population and of providing most of the food 
needed by your missionaries. It has from the first been com- 
paratively easy of access, and in future is likely to be on the line 
of one of the most important railroads in Africa, a road by which 
most of the trade of Central Africa, and perhaps even of the Trans- 
vaal, will find its shortest way to its best market, and by which 
even your missionaries in Beira on the east coast will be able to 
make their quickest and shortest journey to England. It has 
been a district of strategic importance as the starting point of 
various trade routes to the far interior, north, south, and east, 
and will continue so, though under materially altered conditions. 
Granted, therefore, a wise and beneficent government and freedom 
to work for God and the welfare of humanity in the land, there is 
no better field in Central Africa for strategic missionary effort 
than the one we occupy. 

The people of the country comprise one of the most important 
branches of the Bantu race, and are divided into a number of 
tribes, but all of them speak the same dialect, and that dialect 
is one of the most important in the Bantu language. We used it 
with advantage as far inland as the lake region, and our young 
people have used it northward in the Congo State and southward 



246 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

in the Barotse valley. They are by no means low-down creatures^ 
incapable of progress, such as travelers have sometimes sought 
to picture all Central African blacks. When your missionaries first 
went among them, they had made considerable progress. The 
time had come, however, to give the people the gospel. A very 
short residence among them was sufficient to show their unques- 
tionable need of missionary help. They were on the verge of a 
great change. Their language had been enriched with a large 
number of words from Portuguese and various native dialects. 
Many superstitions had been brought from other tribes and added 
to those which originally existed among them. They had begun 
to show the blighting touch of some of the worst features of West 
African coast life. Their appetite for their own native-brewed 
beer was giving place to a growing craving for the white man's 
rum. Their old patriarchal slave system had changed into some 
of the blackest features of the Central African slave trade. They 
had already become pupils of the white man, but their teachers 
were such as point and lead the way to the darkest hell, 'and they 
needed teachers — white teachers — to show them the way to a 
higher life, with grander purposes and eternal possibilities. They 
needed Christian missionaries. 

After these years you may justly ask. What has been done? 
Let us consider briefly. 

Young people have been so far won from uncleanly habits and 
taught to do household work that though they cannot be counted 
upon to prepare such rich dainties as many use in this country, 
yet they can prepare and spread a table with clean, well-cooked 
food, such as no disciple of simple living need be ashamed to offer 
his most fastidious guest. Many, who never dreamed of being 
able to handle an ox, have been taught to take untrained cattle 
of the country and break them in to be milked, or work, either in 
the saddle or yoke, and we can now send pure natives on a trek 
in charge of our large wagon drawn by twenty head of cattle, 
though they were not a cattle-loving or cattle-raising people. 
Young men have been taught to build neat and comfortable 
houses far in advance of anjrthing their forefathers dwelt in, and 
fully as good as the ordinary trader in the country occupies. 
Young men have been taught to go into the bush, cut down a tree, 
saw it into boards, and from them make neat paneled doors as 
strongly and well made as three fourths of the doors swinging on 
hinges in this country. Much other work also in this line they do. 



THE WEST CENTRAL AFRICA MISSION. 247 

for which there has been a growing demand from native chiefs and 
white traders. 

From the mission presses a local paper, printed by natives in 
the native dialect, goes out monthly to an increasingly large num- 
ber of subscribers; and text-books, hymns, gospels, etc., are pro- 
duced to meet the needs of our pupils and adherents. Black- 
smiths have been trained to do neater and larger work than was 
ever done in the native smithies. Brickmakers turn out a good 
supply of bricks to use in building, — to the great saving of the 
forests. 

While these things have been done, the weightier matters have 
not been left undone. All such work has been regarded as no 
insignificant aid to the furtherance of the great and specific work. 
Your missionaries have used such means as helps in reaching, 
improving, and uplifting the people. They have used others also. 
By their labors the native dialect has been reduced to writing; 
text-books for use in schools, the whole of the Xew Testament, 
part of the Old, over three hundred hymns, the " Pilgrim's Prog- 
ress," and other valuable literature have already been put into 
print. 

In connection with each of the four older stations, schools have 
been established for young and old of both sexes, in which a large 
number have received the rudiments of an education, and from 
which trained young men have been sent out to open and conduct 
schools in localities round about each of these stations. By 
the last reports, 36 natives were helping the small band of white 
teachers, when in the field, to instruct 2,260 pupils in day schools 
and about 2,000 in Sunday-schools. 

Almost every missionar}' in the field has done medical work, 
not as fully qualified phj^sicians, though certainly not as unquali- 
fied quacks, but as those who recognized their limitations, yet 
saw that there was clearlj^ much that they could do to alleviate 
suffering and break down superstition, and did the best they 
could. Their efforts, furthered by the very efficient services of 
such qualified physicians as have labored in the field, — during the 
past year there was only one, — have opened the hearts of very 
many, paved the way for their hearing of the gospel, and helped 
to strengthen the infant faith of some in their great trials of ill 
health. 

Every missionary in the field, from the time he was able to 
speak even imperfectly the native dialect and wisely undertake 



248 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

even a simple part in the great work of preaching Christ, has 
done so, and every other form of work engaged in by them has 
been carried on with the distinct idea of helping the natives to 
know Christ and hve the Christ hfe. Every native whose Ufe and 
character has made it at all possible to do so, has been encouraged 
to help propagate a knowledge of the gospel of Jesus Christ. As 
a result, every station is preeminently a preaching place. In thirty- 
nine out stations meetings are regularly conducted, and in a much 
larger number they are held as opportunity is afforded. 'By Chris- 
tian natives the gospel has been preached from Benguella to the 
farthest inland station, and from there to the regions beyond, as far 
as the Barotse Valley and the Congo Free State. 

Healthy, self-supporting, Christian-propagandic churches have 
been formed at four of our stations. The fifth and remaining 
station was founded only last year on virgin soil, and can scarcely 
be expected to have reached the full measure of the stature of a 
Christian church, but it is a healthy, growing child, and will soon 
reach maturity. In connection with these churches a band of 
sixty-six native helpers was employed last year in the school and 
evangelistic departments, and not two hundred dollars were 
received from all outside sources for the support of that band 
during the year. On the other hand, one church reported three 
hundred and eighty-nine dollars of native contributions during 
the same period. 

Last year at the anniversary of one of the native churches some 
of the charter members told how they were first brought under the 
influence of the mission. The young man who had been the first 
boy to come to the station said that the missionary was playing 
with him one day, and then asked if he would not come to school. 
He said he would if his father would permit. He came soon after, 
dressed in a big white shirt of his father's. It was a great crisis 
in his life. The missionary put him to sleep in his own house. 
He was terribly frightened, for he was only a little fellow, and 
some one had told him that the white man loved to eat black boys. 
He lay awake all night and peeped every little while to see if the 
missionary was sleeping, or getting up, and was greatly relieved 
when dayhght came and he was still an uneaten boy. He found 
the missionary not at all cross and so remained to learn the truth. 
Another said he had been sent, during the great native rebellion 
against the Portuguese, to stay at the station with some animals 
belonging to his uncle. He liked the singing and his heart was 



THE WEST CENTRAL AFRICA MISSION. 249 

touched by the '^ good words " he heard, and he remained. A third 
said he had loved to go to war. He had been in three battles, but 
in the last he was shot. The native doctors could not cure him. 
His money was gone and he had nothing with which to pay for 
further help. Then his brothers brought him to the white man, 
who received and healed him. While at the station he heard the 
truth and took up the cross to follow Christ. Another went, on 
the one hand, to escape being made a native doctor, and on the 
other, to earn goods with which to become a trader. A fifth, who 
has since become the recognized pastor of the church, went simply 
to earn money. They were tempted by different kinds of bait, 
influenced by different motives. They came under the power 
of the same infallible Word. It changed their hearts, and led 
them into the everlasting kingdom of God's dear Son. 

A large work has been done, but under grave disadvantages. 
Our force is utterly inadequate to the demands made upon it. 
Every station is in pressing need of reenforcements. We ought 
to have a well-equipped institute, established for the training of 
native helpers, an institute in which Christian young women 
would be trained in domestic science to assist in establishing 
homes of sweetness, comfort, and Christian helpfulness, an insti- 
tute from which a steady procession of Christian trained agricul- 
turalists, blacksmiths, carpenters, and other mechanics would go 
forth to all parts of the field, helping every phase of the ordinary 
life of the people, an institute in which teachers of approved 
character, intelligence, and undoubted piety would be educated 
to meet the progressive needs of schools scattered over the whole 
area, an institute in which well tested Christian teachers of 
undoubted ability, and above all things of unquestionably close 
walk with God, would receive a special training that would fit 
them to fill the positions of ordained pastors. 



250 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 



REPORT BY THE COMMITTEE ON THE REPORT OF 
THE HOME DEPARTMENT. 

Rev. R. W. McLaughlin, D.D., Chairman. ] 

In a somewhat decadent fishing village on the Maine coast there 
is a rather interesting postmaster, by name Captain Jones, who 
receives the mail once a week during ten months of the year, and 
during July and August receives it once a day in order to accom- 
modate the few summer visitors. The speaker, while spending his 
vacation there the last summer, had as the guest of his family a 
young lady, by name Mabel Jones. She had reason to believe 
that a letter had been mailed to her from New York on Saturday, 
and so on Monday evening called at the post-office. for the same. 
Much to her surprise, there was no letter. However, the next 
afternoon over came the postmaster to the cottage with a letter 
addressed to her. Upon inquiring where it had come from, — as 
there had been no mail since she had called, — the postmaster 
confessed that he had received it in the mail of the night before. 
But upon reading the address upon the envelope, he had been so 
attracted to it that he could not pass it on to its owner. " For," 
he'^said, " I had a sister by name Mabel Jones, and she married 
seventeen years ago and went West. And I hadn't seen this 
name for all these years. So when yesterday I saw the name I 
just put it on the window sill, and from time to time I've looked 
at it. But a few minutes ago it occurred to me that you might 
want the letter, so I've brought it over." 

And the committee felt somewhat in the mood of this quaint old 
postmaster after reading the report of the Home Department. 
It had not seen anjrthing like it for seventeen and more years. 
It wants to put it on the window sill and look at it from time to 
time. It recalls so many hopes hitherto unreahzed. It awakens 
so many lines of thought. It raises so many questions that must 
be answered. 

But, after all, the report does not belong to the committee, but 
to you; and our duty is not to look at it and yield to the senti- 
ment of our hearts, but to pass it On to you, that at your leisure 
you may, as it were, tear open the envelope and read its contents. 

But in handing to 3^ou this report this morning, permit us to 



COMMITTEE ON KEPORT OF THE HOME DEPARTMENT. 251 

summarize the same in about three expressions. And the first 
is, the report is disturbing because of a revelation it contains. 
Since reading the report the committee has taken some pains 
to inquire of others regarding their understanding of the situation 
as to volunteers for the foreign field, and without exception has 
found the impression prevalent that young men and women for 
this work were abundant, and the only question was one of money 
with which to send them. Not so, says Secretary Patton in his 
report. The supply is inadequate. This, the committee beheve^ 
is a revelation to most of our churches, and must be passed along 
the line until our Congregational force understands the situation. 

The second expression the committee wishes to use in summa- 
rizing the report is that it is quickening in the indications it gives 
of far-reaching plans of work now being carried out on the home 
field. Whatever may be the facts regarding the individual 
members of the home churches and the large number of churches 
which do not contribute, it is not true that our officials are playing 
with this great work. When one keeps in mind the distinction 
between a business organization and a religious society, the dis- 
tinction being that the one is compulsory and the other is volun- 
tary, it is little short of marvelous, the high efficiency of the effort 
and the variety and number of the agencies now at work to make 
possible the results. 

A third expression which the committee wishes to use in 
summarizing the report is the ground for encouragement which 
the report gives, due, not to the results aimed at, but rather to 
the results achieved. The committee refers, of course, to the 
financial returns. Let us not forget that apart from the announce- 
ment made by Secretary Patton on Tuesday afternoon the report 
would still be a most encouraging one; for when the books of the 
treasurer closed, on September 10, there had then been received 
$913,159.64, — the largest amount in the history of the Board. 
And when this statement is analyzed it is found that the gain over 
previous years was due entirely to the gifts of the living. We 
need to return to the good old New England days when no one 
was supposed to have died properly who did not upon death leave 
something in his will for the Board. But while we are working 
our way back to the old legacy idea, it is cause for profound grati- 
tude that this great work is increasing its hold upon the hearts 
and minds of the living. And so, in presenting this report upon 
the report of the Home Department, the committee would note the 



252 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

danger in the present situation, due to a lack of recruits, the 
weakness caused by the failure of many churches to contribute, 
the confidence in the officers inspired by the evidence of thorough 
planning and wise execution, and the fresh courage aroused by the 
rising tide of contributions as a result of the prayers and efforts of 
all those identified with the cause. 



THE WORK OF THE HOME DEPARTMENT. 
Rev. R. W. McLaughlin, D.D., of Grand Rapids, Mich. 

And now, Mr. Chairman, having studied the work of our Home 
Department in the light of the reports presented, I am led to 
speak for a few minutes on the question of the home church as 
related to the foreign work. This subject is the one uppermost in 
our thoughts at this meeting. The president in his letter addressed 
to the corporate members requested that this theme be given the 
place of prominence. And it is fitting that this should be so. 

This meeting is called to celebrate, not the one hundredth 
anniversary of the sending of missionaries to the foreign field, but 
the one hundredth anniversary of the beginning of a definite 
impulse in the lives of men at home, the outcome of which was 
later the sending of men away from home. And so the one impor- . 
tant question for this meeting is not that of the planting of mission 
churches on the foreign field, that they in turn may become mis- 
sionary churches, but the maintenance of missionary churches on 
the home field that they may not become mission churches. The 
day has gone by when it is necessary to argue that the Christian 
Church should become missionary. The day has now come when 
it is possible for us to say that the church which fails to be mis- 
sionary in its ideals ceases to be Christian in its purpose. So then 
the supreme question for every church to answer is simply this: 
Is it a missionary church? And this means, do all of its members 
conceive of themselves as somehow linked with God in a task 
that belongs to the ages? For, after all, the one sublime reality and 
glory of the missionary enterprise is the presence there of the 
eternal. There are phases of the missionary task that are tem- 
poral and limited. But a man has never caught the swing and 
power of the work until he has felt himself in the presence of a 
work that belongs to no age, yet to every age, because it is ageless. 



COMMITTEE OX REPORT OF THE HOME DEPARTMENT. 253 

It was Adolph Harnack who said to the group of students in the 
University of BerHn, " Young gentlemen, the man who asks 
what is new in rehgion is not the man who hves in reHgion." 
And nowhere does a man or church feel more the force of this 
remark than when engaged in the work of ushering in the kingdom 
of righteousness the world over. 

But how create this sense of the eternal character of the work 
in our churches? In other words, how make our home churches 
truly religious and, therefore, missionary? To answer this question 
let us turn to the best description of a missionary church in litera- 
ture. Of course I refer to the description found on the pages of 
the New Testament. 

And what do we find? Three great facts or truths that stand 
out distinctly in the life of these churches. First, wherever the 
church existed as a missionary church, there was found a vital 
faith in the Lord Jesus Christ as alive and guiding them. There 
were men in the churches who had seen Jesus, who had looked into 
his mild and magnificent eye. They had also seen him seized by 
an angry nation, — his body crucified and placed in a tomb. And 
yet he rose from the dead and ascended into the heavens. He 
was the exalted Christ, living at the throne of God, and guiding 
them in their task of conquering .the world for truth. This fact 
was the first great motive power in their lives. And j^et by itself 
it will not create a missionary church. By itself it gives the 
church but a vague, transcendental idea, which has no power in 
the world of actual Hving. 

But with this fact there was another. The life of God in their 
lives was a reality. They believed that it was the privilege of 
every individual to experience God's life through Jesus Christ. 
And the church for them meant not only a group of men and 
women guided b}^ the unseen yet loving Lord, but it meant a 
group of men banded together by a deep and hidden experience 
which each shared according to his needs. And so Paul writes 
to them that they are the temples of God. He hopes that Christ 
may be formed in them the hope of glory. And this is the second 
great motive of the missionary church, — an experience by which 
they taste and see that the Lord is good. But this is not enough. 
For men might experience the God life in their souls and then be 
led into spiritual pride. 

And so the third great fact of the Xew Testament Church is 
that they were grouped together under the leadership of the 



254 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

unseen Christ, having experienced God's hfe, and also attempting 
to hve the holy life in brotherly fellowship. 

They did not always succeed. Sometimes failure came. Paul's 
letter to the Galatians and Corinthians, and James' epistle reveal 
this. But, nevertheless, in the midst of all the failure, gradual 
success came to them. And as they succeeded they became mis- 
sionary churches. For a missionary church is one that attempts 
to live the holy life in brotherly fellowship. And as such a church 
is formed of those who have experienced the life of God, therefore, 
the test of the fellowship will be in the effort to make possible for 
others this experience. And in making the effort, the guidance 
of the one to whom the experience comes is sought. 

And this leads to two thoughts in the life of a missionary church. 
The first is that the greatest thing any member of such a church 
can possess is a religious experience; the second, the greatest 
thing any man can do is to be loyal to that experience. And to 
possess the one and do the other means a life consecrated to God 
for the service of man. 



COMMITTEE ON THE TREASURER'S REPORT. 255 



REPORT BY THE COMMITTEE ON THE TREASURER'S 

REPORT. 

Joshua W. Davis, Chairman. 

With customary care the officers of the Board have aheady 
distributed copies of the treasurer's report, inviting perusal. But 
with the later glorious news of the complete covering of the debt, 
what more can we gather from perusal, for how can we possibly 
enter into the details of these necessarily condensed columns of 
dry figures? 

Our Lord, who, of old, sat over against the treasury and set his 
measure on the gifts cast in, and by it stimulated soulful gifts for 
all ages, will surely touch our eyes, so that neither these figures 
nor anything in the work shall seem commonplace, but the rather 
be transfigured and reveal the real inwardness of this business 
document. 

The garment our Lord girded about him in his daily ministries 
was of the common native cloth, but it was really glorified the 
moment he took it for his use before it shone on the Mount of 
Transfiguration. And though he still veils his glory under the 
homespun robe of the little gifts of his people, surely our eyes will 
not be holden, but we shall see his beauty in every item of his 
gracious working in his children. 

Therefore, with a deep stirring of heart in thankfulness to Him 
we note this year's increase of gifts from living donors, through 
the devotedly earnest appeals of our secretaries, missionaries, 
pastors, and other leaders, and in the consecrated response of 
thousands in the churches. And we Avould not lessen the emphasis 
of joy and thanksgiving over this increase when we add that it 
requires an effort to hold ourselves steady in faith and thankful- 
ness when we see this and other years' gain cut down by the falling 
off of legacies. A few even drop the unwise word, '' Legacies are 
always a lottery," and their zeal is chilled. 

Look at the facts. Legacy receipts this last year are $10,000 
below the previous year, when they were at the average of the last 
ten years ($135,000), and that was $40,000 below the average of 
the previous eight years ($175,000), and $82,000 below the average 
of the three highest of those eight years ($217,000); and that very 
much higher range in general legacies twelve to eighteen years ago 



256 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

was in no wise due to the Otis and Swett legacies of over a million 
and a half, they being wholly additional, and separately credited 
and separately used, chiefly for enlargements of the work. 

Certainly with this weakness at this point of " legacies as a 
reliance," there is no question that duty requires a devoted setting 
ourselves to the creating of an atmosphere of consecration on this 
line of bequests as well as of generous giving during life. 

Our craving to see immediate results will not make us at first 
enthusiastic in such a slow, though important, work of education; 
but it will be a test whether we will humbly place ourselves in still 
further sympathy with our Lord's patience in his methods, having 
already begun on educational lines with the young. Last year'^ 
successful effort with a small portion of the churches, intended to 
be educational and permanent in its results, will continue another 
year and require our ardent cooperation; and it is intensely 
important whether these two years of special work among the 
churches shall be made by them really educational, and perma- 
nently upbuilding of interest in missions, or be only spasmodic 
in effect, requiring repetition which is weakening. 

But to return to the specific point of legacies, it is an important 
question whether we are laying foundations for our prayers and 
efforts for legacies in deep, earnest thanksgiving for those already 
received. Some have, but how many of us have actually presented 
before God one thankful recognition of legacies received? (It 
is to be noted that the list of " Legacy Funds " in the treasurer's 
report is a reminder of the many more legacies that are not set 
apart as separate funds.) 

Have we not known a widow, who has been living somewhat 
alone, and economically, and who could give only a small sum 
at the monthly and annual collections, but has comforted herself 
and thanked the Lord that she could look forward to leaving a 
part or all of her little property by will to the dear cause? And 
have we carefully planned and labored, individually and collec- 
tively, that children, relatives, and others be influenced towards 
that kind of thank-offering, after having carefully included in 
our will what the Lord, in repeated holy conferences with him 
concerning it, has shown to be his wish from us? - \ 

We gratefully rejoice in the increase of Conditional Gifts, as 
stated by the treasurer, and do not forget that from them, as they 
gradually mature and become available, we shall derive substantial 
but variable sums; but this will be indefinite years ahead, when 



COMMITTEE ON THE TREASURER'S REPORT. 257 

growth in the work will imperatively require increase of means 
far beyond any amounts that may then become free for use from 
that source. 

And the urgency, therefore, remains for vigorous and patient 
cultivation of resources from legacies, as already argued, not 
abating one whit from our most consecrated effort. 

There may be an honest, undefined fear in some mind lest in 
this sphere of hard business realities we weave into our thought 
too large a measure of ideahsm; but we believe our Lord will 
help us to keep sane and healthy, while we seek the stimulus of 
spiritual perception and cultivate its constant exercise. 

During the summer, while only lightly impressed with the 
beauty of many large groups of flowers, one day we paused with a 
microscope over one or two single flowers, and were quickened into 
reverent wonder and praise at the new revelations of the immea- 
surable wisdom and beauty of God's workings; and yet our feeble 
glass showed only a part. 

So with our limited knowledge in mission matters as a small 
magnifying glass, we pause over some one item in the report con- 
cerning a mission of which you know the most — one in which, 
it rnay be, a son or daughter or friend is a worker; and you have 
prayed for that field and its workers. Thinking humbly of your 
small gift included in the sum allotted to that mission, you notice 
a golden vial marking the prayers for that field — and it gleams 
like a star; and, unperceived before, a wonderful array of such 
stars, some of the first magnitude, grouping themselves into words, 
and you see these words are God's promises. And these starry 
vials, full of odors, presented before the Lord, are indeed the 
prayers of his children, but also their consecrated savings — the 
self-denying, prayerfully surrendered and prayerfully followed 
gifts which he treasures and never fails to Mess, even to the great 
consummations of eternity. 

What an immeasurable treasury of ultimate assets for the 
missions! 

Of course in the constant cry for brevity the treasurer could not 
give even a glimpse of these. 

Looking again at his columns, the figures are not so much 
notations of money values as forms of consecrated personality; 
not so much numerals as faces — luminous faces — of givers and 
workers, instinct with the light of love and worship. 

One figure bears the face of one who has just entered within the 



258 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

vail, and represents her last gift; and another that of a young 
Christian, joyful over depositing his first earnings. And hidden 
behind the treasurer's list of expenditures for the missions, 
lessening them, are the gifts of native Christians, — in one place a 
penny, the commercial value of a little dish of rice, but really an 
alabaster box from a Hindoo woman. Time would fail to tell the 
vision that bursts forth from these closely packed columns, and 
the luster of many of these gifts is as of a stream of jewels pouring 
into the treasury, covering some rusty coins among them, it is 
true. 

But what a multitude of glowing faces, and what glory in them! 
You wish you knew more of them, but do recognize some, and 
among them some missionaries, giving part of their small salaries 
as well as their whole selves. And inseparably mingling in this 
stream of giving, praying, and labor, busy conferring and working 
over questions affecting this report, are the famihar faces of the 
treasurer and secretaries, — ofttimes tired, but cheerful faces. 

Best of all results from this deeper sense of the unseen, you will 
by this time reverently and in silence have felt constrained to 
kneel with the treasurer's and the Missionary Herald monthly 
reports in your hand and consecrate yourself, as never before, 
to prayer and thanksgiving for the givers, who are the foundation 
for a treasurer's report, and for their increasing pray erf ulness over 
their increasing gifts. 

And if we continue faithful to this new inspiration, the pleas 
of our home secretary for more soul- absorbing prayer and gifts 
will begin to be realized, and the million dollars be continuously 
raised, and soul harvests over the whole field, for which all the 
rest is the indispensable means, will be gathered in, for soul pour- 
ing out by us as well as by our Lord is the price of soul harvesting. 

And mark you, dear brethren, any increase of our gifts and of 
our prayers will be of real, living power only in proportion as we 
give thanks over the cases of conversion of individuals and of 
groups through the great field, and in proportion as we grow in 
the sense of the exceeding grace and patience and tenderness of 
God's working in these cases, which in reading the Missionary 
Herald we have often passed over too lightly as small items. 

Rays of light reach us that seem to be from a tiny star, but that 
diminutive star is a world many times greater than our sun. The 
awakening of a soul in Asia or Africa is to us hke the shining of a 
little star — but oh, the immeasurable, far-reaching glory of it! 



COMMITTEE ON THE TREASURER'S REPORT. 259 

But nothing has yet been suggested of the reason for sympa- 
thetic appreciation which a scrutiny of the treasurer's report 
reveals. ReaHze the wisdom, patience, and endurance required 
in the multitudinous duties of that office. One feature out of a 
great variety will illustrate. 

Friends bequeath pieces of real estate in various parts of the 
country {and we earnestly pray for more) and others give or be- 
queath special stocks and bonds, these various properties to be 
held until they yield an expected improvement in value which 
is the hope of the yearning givers. 

But consider the inquiries and watching this involves, some- 
times for 'years, to determine the wise time to realize upon each 
item in the list. And on another line of the treasurer's thought 
and that of his earnest counselors, the Finance Committee, the 
changing values of investments — three hundred separate items of 
investment to be watched. Of these your committee now report- 
ing has examined the present value, and is pleased to report the 
total value encouragingly above cost. 

Scrutinizing that item in the report to which business attention 
is always directed, the cost of administration, your committee 
plainly perceives that the treasurer and his assistants have borne 
their share along with the missionaries in the burden of insufficient 
funds. And we admire their self-sacrificing overwork and strain 
for the sake of economy, all quietly hidden from general view. 
But we must not be blind to the inseparable and inexorable fact 
that overwork and undue strain tend to breakdowns in health and 
to weakening of vital efficiency, and have so resulted in many 
instances in the field, where replacing of such disabled working 
force is wastefuUy expensive, as the treasurer's reports show. 
And such undue pressure is grievously unjust, even w^hen it does 
not reach such serious result. 

Adjustment of sufficient receipts to all the work, alike in the 
broad field and in the home departments, is the serious problem 
before this gathering, and claim's the consecrated attention of 
all the churches. 



260 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 



BUSINESS MEETING ON THURSDAY AFTERNOON. 

The afternoon session on Thursday was largely devoted to busi- 
ness, which may be found recorded in full in the December issue 
of the Missionary Herald, pages 628 to 632. 

A resolution was offered by Rev. Washington Gladden, D.D., 
concerning cooperation with the United Brethren and Methodist 
Protestants as follows: 

''Under the good Providence of God, and, as we trust, by the guidance of 
his gracious Spirit, the Christians of this country, bearing the names of United 
Brethren, Methodist Protestants, and Congregationahsts, have been drawing 
together in the hope of a closer unity and with the desire for more efficient 
cooperation in Christian work. 

" We rejoice in all that this movement signifies and promises, and we believe 
that the time has come when, without waiting for the adjustment of ques- 
tions of polity and vested interests, it may be possible for the people of these 
three denominations to unite their forces in the work of foreign missions. 

" Be it, therefore, resolved, That a committee of seven persons be appointed 
by the Board at this meeting to consult with representatives of the missionary 
interests of the other denominations, with a view to the speedy consolidation 
of the foreign missionary work of the three Christian bodies." 

This was then referred to the Business Committee, and being 
reported back by them for action by the Board, was adopted. 
President Capen named the following committee: Rev. W. 
Gladden, Rev. W. H. Ward, Rev. A. E. Dunning, Rev. J. L. 
Barton, President Cyrus Northrup, President J. B. Angell, and 
Edward H. Pitkin. 

The Business Committee reported back with its approval the 
following resolution: 

" With profound gratitude to God we wish to acknowledge the results of 
nearly a hundred years of missionary service to far-off nations. But, great 
as has been the success, we recognize that it has been far below both our 
ability and our opportunity. The work has been carried on by only a part 
of our church membership ; the sacrifices of the few ought to be the sacrifices 
of all. 

" (1) We believe, first, it would be a disgrace to our churches to compel the 
Prudential Committee, because of the lack of funds, to give up or curtail any of 
the present work of the Board. Work may be transferred, but only when it 
can be more economically or efficiently carried on by others. 

" (2) Second. We approve of such larger expenditure in cultivating the home 
field and in work for young people as in the judgment of the Prudential 
Committee may be desirable, to the end that the new century, both at home 
and abroad, may begin with an advance and not a retreat." 



BUSINESS MEETING ON THURSDAY AFTERNOON. 261 

A discussion followed upon the second resolution, and upon one 
offered by Rev. Homer T. Fuller, in which Rev. Lyman Abbott, 
D. D., Secretary C. C. Creegan, Secretary A. N. Hitchcock, Col. 
C. A. Hopkins, Secretary H. Melville Tenney, Mr. Samuel Usher, 
Mr. Charles A. Hull, Mr. Edward H. Pitkin, Dr. Wilham H. Ward, 
Dr. Henry Hopkins, and Rev. Oliver S. Dean participated. It was 
then voted that a committee of three be appointed to consider the 
resolutions offered, and report upon them at the evening session. 
President Capen named the following committee: Mr. John H. 
Perry, Rev. Homer T. Fuller, and Mr. W. W. Mills. They 
reported at the evening session the following substitute resolution 
which was adopted. 

'' We give glory to God for the results of missionary service during the past 
centur}^, and are profoundly grateful for the part which we have been per- 
mitted to bear in it, but sincerely regret that this has been so far below both 
our ability and the opportunit5^ We hope that the present work of the Board 
will not be curtailed, and we approve of such larger expenditure in cultivating 
the home field, and in work among young people as, in the judgment of the 
Prudential Committee, may be desirable, to the end that the new centur}^, both 
at home and abroad, may begin with an advance and not a retreat. 

'' Resolved, That the Prudential Committee be requested to take into consid- 
eration the question of the assignment of the territory, in which the corporate 
members reside, among them, either by conferences or associations, state or 
local, requesting these to secure, each in his o^\ti area, the utmost possible 
interest in and personal subscriptions to the work of the Board, it being 
understood that this duty is to be performed in cooperation with the regular 
agencies employed by the Board for this purpose." 

The Committee on Place and Preacher reported through Rev. 
John De Peu, recommending that the next meeting of the Board 
be held with Pilgrim Church, Cleveland, with the understanding 
that the Committee of Arrangements provide for full time for the 
meeting of the Board to secure unity and continuity in its meet- 
ings. The recommendation was adopted. The committee recom- 
mended that Rev. Charles S. Mills, of St. Louis, be the preacher, 
and Rev. Washington Gladden be the alternate, and it was so 
voted. After the benediction by Rev. Joseph H. Twichell, adjourn- 
ment was taken to 7.30. 



262 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 



DISCUSSION AS TO THE FUTURE POLICY OF THE 
BOARD AT HOME. 

Rev. Lyman Abbott, D.D. 

Mr. President and Fellow-Christians: I heartily second and 
desire earnestly to urge the adoption of the second resolution 
which has been read and of the policy which it indicates. 

We are living in an age and a country in which everything is 
thrown into the melting-pot. The axioms of our fathers are our 
problems. Is there a right of personal property or ought the 
state to own all the property and direct all the industries? That 
is a question that is seriously and earnestly discussed today. Is 
the relation between the employer and the employed that of a 
modern feudalism in which the employer is a feudal lord and the 
employed are his serfs, or is it a partnership in which common 
interests are to be served by a common enterprise? That ques- 
tion is seriously and earnestly discussed in America today. Ought 
all crimes to be punished by judicial procedure, or if the crime 
is very bad ought the judicial procedure to be set aside and for 
that judicial procedure mob-law substituted? That question is 
really and seriously discussed by public men today. Now, with 
such questions being thus discussed, it ought not to surprise us 
Christians that our fundamental faiths are also submitted to a 
like cross-examination. 

One of those principles is this: Is Christianity a local, provincial, 
and temporary religion, or is it a world-wide religion? Has it 
grown up among a certain people, the natural expression of their 
spiritual aspirations and desires, so that it is adapted to its own 
soil and clime, as certain vegetable products are to their soil and 
clime, or is it like the rain that comes from heaven, and the sun- 
shine, for the whole human race? Not only is that question 
discussed openly and publicly, but that question is itself a funda- 
mental one. If Christianity is a provincial religion, it is a tem- 
porary religion. If there is a Brahmanism which is fitted for 
India, and a Confucianism which is fitted for China, and a Roman- 
ism which is fitted for the Latin races, and a Protestantism which 
is fitted for the Germanic races, and a Puritanism which is fitted 
for the greater New England, they are all provincial; and, however 
provincial we may be in point of fact, we are none of us proud 



DISCUSSION AS TO FUTURE POLICY OF BOARD AT HOME. 263 

of our provincialism. We all expect our children will lay aside 
the provincialism which entangles us. So that the question 
whether the Christian religion is a world-wide religion or a race 
religion is really the question whether it is any true wide religion 
at all. If it is not worthy to give up to others, it is not worthy 
to keep ourselves. If it is not good enough to export, it is not 
good enough to retain, — although I believe there are some 
American manufacturers that do export goods which they cannot 
sell in the home market. 

Three Postulates. 

There are three postulates which I assume in my talk this 
afternoon are to be taken for granted in this gathering. First, that 
the end of all human progress is the kingdom of God on the earth. 
Without defining it, it at least includes the three elements which 
Paul has used in his definition: righteousness, peace, and joy. 
The end of all human progress is a new social order in which, first, 
men will be governed by righteousness, and deal with one another 
fairly, honestly, in accordance with the principles of the Golden 
Rule; second, the spirit of peace and good-will will be universally 
diffused, and there will be cooperation rather than competition, 
and ambition for service in the place of ambition for acquisition; 
and third, there will be universal joy and happiness — the diffusion 
of those things that make for happiness, the distribution of wealth 
with its material comforts, many homes and few palaces; the dis- 
tribution of education,, with schools everywhere in place of a few 
great universities; the distribution of virtue and religion, a church 
in every hamlet in place of a few great cathedrals. Dr. Pente- 
cost this morning said he would not venture to define Christian 
civilization. Well, I should be a little audacious if I ventured 
to do what he would not venture to do, but I will at least venture 
to say this, that nothing less than this is a Christian civilization — 
nothing less than a civilization which is pervaded by this triple 
spirit of justice and fair dealing, harmony and good- will, joy and 
universal welfare. That is my first proposition. 

The second axiom is that the secret of all progress is the under- 
standing of God and conformity to God's will, and cooperation 
with God in God's ways, and fellowship with God in his Spirit. 
Society is not made up by a universal suffrage; it is not made up 
by the mere concretion of human wills, each working in its own 
way and counteracting one another. It never will be made up 



264 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

harmoniously, peacefully, and happily, until the members of that 
society seek to know what is the will of God. 

Thirdly, Jesus Christ is the son of God, through whom the 
infinite and the eternal is interpreted to the sons of men, and he 
is the Son of Man, through whom humanity is interpreted to itself 
— not a son of the Germanic race, not a son of New England, not 
a son of the Orient, but the Son of Man. Now, I say, I assume 
these three postulates as what we here all believe in. 

Why was it that last year, speaking broadly, one half of the 
Congregational churches did not contribute to the American 
Board? That question has been asked on this platform. Again 
I will endeavor to be audacious enough to give it an answer. 
Some of them would not contribute because individuals in the 
church gave, and that served the purpose; some of them because 
they were not self-supporting and they thought mistakenly that 
they must not give to others while they were recipients them- 
selves; some of them because they were on the edge of a mission- 
ary field and were themselves ministering to local heathen and 
thought that sufficed. But when all such allowance is made, it 
remains true that in the Congregational churches there is a dis- 
belief or an unbelief or a nebulous belief in these three proposi- 
tions — an unbelief or a half belief or a nebulous belief in this 
fundamental truth that the Christian religion is no provincial 
religion, but a world-wide religion, God manifested to the sons of 
men as the secret of all human prosperity, the secret of all civili- 
zation, the end of all human progress. 

Practical Methods. 

It is the commonplace of our time that we are living in an age 
of skepticism. How shall we meet it? We are living in an age 
of spiritual apathy. How shall we arouse the church? We are 
living in an age that has no revivals. How shall we bring back 
again the days of Whitefield? There are two ways. We may 
attempt to do it by academic discussion, or we may attempt to do 
it by a call to practical service. We ministers may go into our 
libraries, in the first place, and then out of our libraries we may 
come and preach sermons to prove the divinity of Christ, the 
doctrine of the Trinity, the theory of the Atonement, the plan of 
salvation. I am not criticising that method. A certain amount 
of that method is necessary and important. But it is not the 
way by which the wave of skepticism will be met. That is not the 



DISCUSSION AS TO FUTURE POLICY OF BOARD AT HOME. 265 

American way of meeting intellectual problems. Americans, 
nationally, temperamentally, characteristically, are indifferent 
to academic questions and vitally interested in practical ones. 
The question of bimetallism was discussed by scholars for half a 
century, and most Americans did not know there was such a 
question. When Mr. Bryan said, " Let us adopt free silver in the 
United States," every man in the country went to studying 
bimetallism. When the question of socialism was an academic 
question most men paid little attention to it. The other day 
Mr. Bryan, on the platform in New York, said that the govern- 
ment, state and federal, ought to own and operate all the rail- 
roads, and do you know that in less than two weeks' time I had 
certainly six and I think a dozen letters written to me asking me 
to recommend books for the study of socialism, and some of them 
were from ministers. So long as bimetallism and socialism were 
academic questions, Americans listened to their discussion with 
languid interest or not at all, but when the question was brought 
as a practical one to the American people, they took hold of it. 

When the minister goes into his pulpit to prove by philos- 
ophy borrowed from Hegel, or by texts borrowed from John, that 
Jesus Christ is divine, a waning congregation listens with lessened 
interest. When Dr. Grenfell comes from Labrador to materialistic 
New York to tell what the divine Christ has been doing for the 
healing of the sick, for the redeeming of men from poverty and 
wretchedness and disease and death, not only do men flock to the 
churches to hear him, but he gets more iuAdtations from secular 
clubs than he can accept. The academic way is not the American 
way, and it is not the divine w^ay. The apostles did not sit down 
in Jerusalem, form an assembly, and thrash out among themselves 
the Apostles' Creed. They went out into the pagan lands to carry 
this message that the Redeemer had come, the Deliverer, the 
Ransomer, the man who was bringing liberty for slavery, justice 
for injustice, wealth for poverty, education for ignorance, the 
kingdom of God on the earth. These apostles looked out and 
they saw^ a world groaning and travailing together in pain, and 
they felt the throb of that human pain in their hearts. They 
were intensely humanitarian and they felt intensely this sorrow 
of the pagan world. They believed they had in their hands and 
in their hearts the remedy. They believed they had that which 
would set the world free from its oppression, from its wrongs, from 
its cruelty, and they went out with that message, and it took four 



266 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

centuries of missionary work before the Apostles' Creed was 
evolved. The creed grew out of the missionary work^ not the 
missionary work out of the Apostles' Creed. 

Do you remember how and where the remedy for yellow fever 
was discovered? Not in the quiet laboratories of Yale and Har- 
vard and Cornell. Down in Cuba, on the tented field, with the 
sound of battle and with all the dreaded waves of yellow fever 
sweeping around, there Dr. Reed discovered what was the secret 
of yellow fever and how to prevent it. Not in our theological 
libraries, but out in the tented field, out w^here we have to meet 
the woe and the pain of the world, there we shall learn the prac- 
tical remedy, there we shall find the cure for the skepticism of the 
world and the apathy of the church. 

I want, — I am always wanting the impossible or the impracti- 
cable, — I want the American Board to do a great deal more than 
this resolution calls upon them to do. I am not quite sure 
whether they ought to, but I know what I want. I want to see 
this Prudential Committee organize a crusade in the United 
States of America, not for the purpose of raising money, but for 
the purpose of raising Christian standards; not for the purpose of 
promoting sound doctrine, but for the purpose of calling to sound 
duty; not for the purpose of producing emotional revivals of 
religion, but of promoting a revival of the spirit of service, in the 
faith that such a crusade is the very best way to raise money, 
to bring about sound doctrine, and to create revivals of religion. 

A Humanitarian Age. 

This, we are constantly told, is a humanitarian age. It is. 
The American people are interested as they never were before in 
their fellow-men. A good many of them have, thrown over the 
old definition of God, and they have not got a new one. A good 
many of them have lost the celestial vision of their childhood and 
have not got a new one. I am sorry they have not that conception 
of God which Dr. Hyde gave us the other morning. I am sorry 
they have not the vision of the kingdom of God which is the spur 
and incentive to spiritual industry. But at least they have this, — 
an interest in their fellow-men. The American press has spent 
thousands of dollars to bring to us from across the seas the news 
of what is going on in Russia. Men go there at the hazard of their 
lives because the American people are interested in the cause of 
liberty and justice in Russia. When I was a boy, almost the whole 



DISCUSSION' AS TO FUTURE POLICY OF BOARD AT HOME. 267 

northern nation and almost the whole northern church was 
apathetic in the presence of slaverj'. Today, though the slaves 
are emancipated, the Xorth is turning out thousands of men and 
millions of dollars to educate and elevate the half-emancipated 
slaves. We went to war with Spain over Cuba, partly, no doubt, 
in a spirit of revenge, and partly, also, inspired by the high 
resolve that the cruelties which had been perpetrated on our 
fellow-citizens across that narrow band of water should be per- 
petrated no longer. The American people are interested in their 
fellow-men, and though I may be misunderstood, — I have been, 
sometimes, — we Christian men who believe in God and in 
immortality and in a crucified and risen Saviour, are to take the 
age as we find it in order that we may not leave the age as we find 
it. It is a humanitarian age. Yes, and Christianity is a very 
humanitarian religion. Hear Christ's definition of his function: 
" The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me 
to preach glad tidings to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the 
brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recover- 
ing of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to 
preach the acceptable year of the Lord." Here is his definition 
of his mission: " As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you. 
And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto 
them. Receive 3'e the Holy Ghost.'' This Christian Church of 
ours ought to go to a people that are already interested to see the 
horrible cruelties in the Congo stopped; to see the death-in-life 
in China awakened; to see the barbarisms in Russia, the harrow- 
ing and plowing of men and women under the heel of despotism, 
brought to an end. We ought to go to our fellow-citizens and 
say to them, in the spirit in which Paul went, in his own time: 
" We have in our hands and we have in our hearts that which will 
give righteousness — that is justice and fair dealing and honest 
government: and that which will give peace, accord, harmony, 
and good-will, and that which will give joy and universal welfare." 
We gather in our prayer meetings and pray that Christ will come 
to us, and he says, '' Go ye into all the world and preach to all 
nations, and lo, I am with you." We pray that he will give us 
the gift of the Holy Ghost and he says, " As the Father hath 
sent me into the world, even so send I you. Go 3'e, and ye shall 
receive the Holy Ghost." He will not leave his ministry to come 
and sit by our side while we carry on our fishing. He will be 
our companion when we leave our nets and follow him. 



268 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 



Discussion, — Rev. C. C. Creegan, D.D. 

I have been asked to say a word on these resolutions which are 
before you. The second resolution reads: 

" We approve of such larger expenditure in cultivating the home field and 
in work for young people as in the judgment of the Prudential Committee may 
be desirable, to the end that the new century, both at home and abroad, ma}^ 
begin with an advance and not with a retreat." 

Touching the work among young people, it has become perfectly 
clear to me during the last year, more so than ever before, that if 
we are to have a giving constituency, say, ten or fifteen or twenty 
years from now; if legacies are to be written by and by; if we are 
to have a full treasury; if we are to have missionaries who will 
respond to the call and go to the front, — work among the children 
in the Sunday-schools and in the societies of Christian Endeavor 
and other organizations of young people must be pressed as never 
before. If you do not all know it, brethren, some of us do, — you 
among the rest, Mr. Chairman, — that we are very fortunate in 
having, in the Providence of God, a man who seems to have had 
just exactly the right training for leadership in this work among 
the young people. He is at the head of that department in our 
executive force, his name is familiar to many of you, and will soon 
become familiar to all our churches, I hope, up and down the land. 

Now, if there is any one thing that can be done during the com- 
ing year, one thing that is to have precedence above ever3rthing 
else, in my judgment, it should be work in our Sunday-schools and 
in cultivating young people along missionary lines, establishing 
training classes that will train our teachers in the Sunday-schools, 
so that they may train the children under them, and also work 
among the young people in the Christian Endeavor societies. If 
this work is to be successful, our superintendents in the Sunday- 
schools must be quickened. It would surprise some of you who 
are not familiar with the exact facts to know how small a per cent 
of our Sunday-school superintendents seem to have these mis- 
sionary problems on their hearts. There are some of them, of 
course, who are devoted to the cause, and I think the number is a 
growing one, but it is not so large as it should be, and work along 
that line must be done. 

Now, if this work is done, and done successfully, of course there 



DISCUSSIOX AS TO FUTURE POLICY OF BOARD AT HOME. 269 

must be an increase of expenditure. It takes money for postage, 
for writing letters, for traveling expenses, for various publica- 
. tions, and, of course, the money will be provided by the Pru- 
dential Committee, and the corporate membership of the Board 
will stand back of the Prudential Committee because they trust 
them. I will not discuss that point any further. I think we are 
all of one mind on that. 

One other point. If we are to cultivate the entire field and lift 
along the whole line, the question arises, Shall we have a larger 
staff of field workers? I want to speak to that question for a few 
moments. 

It is absolutely impossible, of course, with the present staff that 
we have in the field, our home secretary and three field secretaries 
covering the whole land, to do it as thoroughly as it should be 
done. The ideal, of course, would be to have all of our pastors 
thoroughly awakened on the subject of foreign missions, and 
thoroughly posted in regard to them, and if that were the case 
you could dismiss all of j^our field workers at this meeting and 
close up that business so that it would not be a charge against the 
Board for the future. For, Mr. Chairman, you know — you have 
spoken and written upon that subject several times — that there 
are some pastors in this country who do not take up a collection 
for the American Board, and those figures that Dr. Abbott brought 
out in his address indicate that it is a very large number, so large 
that I do not care to repeat his figures here. It is mortifying for 
a Congregationahst to feel that there are so many pastors that 
do not take up any collection for foreign missions. Now, there is 
not a pastor here that belongs to that Hst. How do I know? 
Because a man is not going to come up to a meeting of the Ameri- 
can Board and pay his traveling expenses — and, if he does not 
have the great privilege of being a corporate member, pa}^ his 
hotel expenses — unless he has an interest in this work. If he is 
interested, he is going to have a collection from his church, and 
if there isn't anybod}^ else to join him his wife will join him and 
they two will make up the collection and that church will be 
represented. 

Now, the problem arises. How are we going to get those several 
hundred pastors interested? I think one of the best ways — if 
you will allow me to speak right out from my heart — to get them 
interested would be to bring them under the influence of just such 
a meeting as we had jester day afternoon or j^esterda}" morning 



270 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

in the college chapel. If there has ever been a better meeting in 
the history of the American Board, Mr. President, you and I do 
not remember it. There certainly has not been the equal of it 
within twenty-five years. If those pastors that we are talking 
about, who did not give and did not ask their churches to give 
anything to this work, had been present yesterday, we would find 
next year that their churches would respond because the pastors 
would urge the cause upon them. If they had been there, or if 
next year we could get them at the meeting in Cleveland, and 
under the influence of just such an atmosphere, I think this ques- 
tion would be largely solved. But how are we going to do it? 
Well, Mr. Chairman, you and I have voted for some years back 
that the only people who are going to receive free entertainment 
at the meetings of the American Board are those very ones — to 
be perfectly frank — who are best prepared to pay their own bills. 
So that the men who are over these small churches, and who are 
having the fight of their lives over the bread-and-butter question, 
if they can find money enough to come to a meeting of the Ameri- 
can Board, are the men of all others under the blue heavens who 
should receive entertainment, next to our missionaries who are on 
the firing-line in China and Africa, for it is these home mission- 
aries, for the most part, who are the pastors of these churches that 
do not respond. 

Now, I am talking with a great deal of freedom because I am 
going to sail in a few days, and no matter what you say about 
me, I shall be out of the country and shall not hear of it ! But I 
want to tell you that that is a mistake which we made some years 
ago in deciding that the well-to-do men in our churches — that is 
to say, the men who are best able to pay their own bills — are. 
the only ones (the missionaries alone excepted) who are to be en- 
tertained here, and have been entertained at these meetings since 
we changed that rule some ten years ago; and then we stand up 
here and declaim against these pastors on the hillsides, these 
men who would make real sacrifices to pay their railroad fare and 
come to these meetings! 

Now, another thing about this increase of staff. In the old 
days, before you were born, Mr. Chairman, when they were run- 
ning this American Board in the days of our grandfathers, they 
had no field secretaries; the secretaries stayed in Boston and 
attended to the correspondence and did not go out among the 
churches. But they got along pretty well because there were 



DISCUSSION AS TO FUTURE POLICY OF BOARD AT HOME. 271 

consecrated laymen and women here and there among the chmxhes 
who took the thing upon their hearts, and they did the sohciting. 
-When I go to certain towns now, in Connecticut, some old gentle- 
man will take out a very old book running back to the early days 
of the American Board, and show me a list of names, and tell me 
that his father — or in some cases his grandfather — solicited 
through Litchfield County, or through some other county, and got 
these contributions for the American Board. Then, by and by, 
for some reasons that I do not well understand, the American 
Board became a little embarrassed along about 1835, and they 
could not send out any missionaries at that time. The officers 
brought up the question, on the recommendation of the Prudential 
Committee, whether they should hold back these young men who 
wanted to go as missionaries with their young wives. They 
brought it before the Board and the Board said, '' No; but you 
secretaries go out among the churches and secure some additional 
help — field agents, or whatever you call them — and send them 
out among the churches and get the money to send out these 
young men who have received this training in the colleges and in 
the seminaries, and who for j^ears have had the missionary fire 
burning in their hearts. Don't keep them in the home land. 
Send them out, and go out and get the money." So they appointed 
several field secretaries, and kept on increasing the number until 
they had thirteen or fourteen men up and down the land doing 
this work. Some states the}^ cut in two, and had two men in a 
single state. The Presbyterians were with the American Board 
in those days; also the Dutch Reformed and German Reformed 
churches, and that helped, of course, to call for this extra assist- 
ance. Now, I don't know how it came about, but by and by there 
came a reaction of feeling. A great many of the pastors said: 
" We have got too many of these field agents." So the Board 
began to cut down the number, and kept on cutting down until the 
Presbyterians withdrew and had their own board — the Dutch 
Reformed churches had withdrawn a little before — and left the 
work chiefl}^ in the hands of the Congregationalists, and it came 
to pass that there were only two field secretaries, one located at 
New York and the other located at Chicago. It was several years 
before a field agent was appointed for the Pacific coast. 

Now, there must have been a reason for that change. There 
was a feeling among the churches that there was too large a staff 
of field secretaries, or district secretaries, or whatever name they 



272 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

bore. Now there has come a reaction of feehng in the other 
direction. It is perfectly plain that two or three men cannot 
cover the whole of the United States and do this w^ork as thor- 
oughly as it ought to be done. 

Now as to the solution, what are we going to do about it? 
Dr. Gladden, moderator of our National Council, a few moments 
ago, catching the atmosphere of that hour this morning when 
Bishop Bell and our friend representing the Methodist Protestants 
poured those eloquent addresses upon this audience, — and so fired 
were they with the missionary spirit that any man sitting upon 
this platform could see the soul-light appear in your faces, and if 
a vote had been taken then you would have unanimously voted, 
^' Let us as quickly as possible combine with these brethren of the 
Methodist Protestant and United Brethren churches," — Dr. 
Gladden introduced that resolution which you have heard read. 
You voted unanimously, '^ We will aim for it." Now, suppose in 
the meantime we just hold this thing in abeyance; suppose we 
pray over it; suppose we press that committee to immediate 
action; suppose, a year from now, if it please God, we arrange the 
thing so that instead of one regiment we shall have three march- 
ing under the banner of the American Board. Let us wait a 
bit, then. And then, by and by, suppose we divide up the field, 
and how will it turn out? Why, take Ohio. If the United 
Brethren come in with us, they give us at once a constituency of 
eight hundred churches in that state. If our Methodist Protestant 
brethren come in also, they give us two hundred churches in that 
state. There are one thousand churches added to our two hun- 
dred and fifty, or twelve hundred and fifty churches aiming for 
the same thing, working under the same Board, in one state. 
Can't you see, then, how we can divide up the field? Give us, then, 
seven field workers, if you please. Let the United Brethren have 
a fair representation, the Methodist Protestants a fair representa- 
tion, and the Congregationalists a fair representation. Let all 
our churches work together. Let the eloquent men, if you please, 
who spoke to us this morning representing those denominations be 
made representatives of the American Board, going out not only 
among their own people to fire them with missionary zeal, but 
among our Congregational churches as well. Working together 
as a unit we will bring in the kingdom of God, not only in the 
United States but in the lands beyond the seas. 



DISCUSSION AS TO FUTURE POLICY OF BOARD AT HOME.. 273 



Discussion, — Rev. A. N. Hitchcock, Ph.D., Chicago, III., 
District Secretary for the Interior. 

Mr. President, Fathers, and Brethren: It is natural for men to 
indulge in the illusions of hope, and there are some things to be 
said in behalf at least of some of these non-contributing churches. 
It would not be proper, it would not be good pohcy, for any 
secretary or representative of the Board, in visiting one of those 
little non-contributing churches, to speak apologetically either 
for their ignorance or their want of practical cooperation; but 
when we are here by ourselves, taking notes of our resources, we 
need to have as clear a perspective as possible. I take it that a 
statement of that kind will pass unchallenged. 

Now, when the statement is made, if it be made, that of six 
thousand Congregational churches, three thousand are non- 
contributing, — thereby encouraging the inference that those 
three thousand non-contributing churches are coordinate with the 
three thousand contributing churches, of equal rank and responsi- 
bility, — we may do some injustice to those churches, and we may 
supply for ourselves uncertain and untrustworthy grounds of 
action. We may be beguiled into the expenditure of effort in 
directions and in areas that will not yield the largest returns. 
I have a more intimate knowledge concerning the churches, con- 
tributing and non-contributing, in the interior district. You will 
see from the report of the Home Department — that portion of 
it which it was my part particularly to prepare — that there are 
about twenty-eight hundred Congregational churches in the 
interior states. Of those, rather more than one thousand last year 
contributed nothing at all to the American Board. Now, shall we 
line up those one thousand non-contributing churches and place 
them, for purposes of comparison and estimated responsibilit}^, 
over against those that contributed and say, '' You are under 
equal obhgation in all respects "? There is very much to support 
a contention of that sort, and yet it seems to me that there are 
certain considerations of expediency, not to say of charity and 
fairness, that would find place just at that point. 

For example, brethren, there are thirteen hundred churches in 
the interior district whose average membership would not, I 
think, exceed thirty-five. There are six hundred Congregational 



274 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

churches in the interior district whose average membership would 
not exceed, I think, twenty. I heard of one church out in Ilhnois 
which had only one member, and he was the clerk. Possibly he 
refused to count any others but himself. We must make allow- 
ance, of course, for such personal equations as those, and yet the 
general statement which I have made is an altogether truthful 
one. When I have occasion, as I have every year, to send out a 
communication that shall reach all the pastors between the western 
boundary of Ohio and the Rocky Mountains, it does not take 
twenty-eight hundred letters to reach them. About two thousand 
will suffice. Why? I think some of you can answer that question 
now, in your own thought, without pausing for further considera- 
tion. It means that many of the churches have no working 
existence. They do not contribute for anything. They have 
simply a name to live. Some of them ought to be stricken off 
the '^ Year-Book. " Some of them have less than ten members — 
less than six or eight. Sometimes they are grouped together and 
ministered to by one man. About three hundred of them in my 
district are in the south Mississippi states, mostly colored and few 
contributing. 

Now, that which I have said, brethren, is not to sustain the 
inference for a moment that we are not to cultivate these small 
churches. The grace of giving should, by every possible and 
practicable means, be cultivated and ingrafted upon the life of 
those young organizations or small organizations, even though the 
majority of them are destined, I suppose, in the Providence of 
God, to remain small. We must cultivate them; in some way we 
must get into touch with them and bring out the latent resources 
that are there. For there are some resources in them and we 
cannot measure them beforehand; they may prove to be larger 
than any predetermined estimate that any of us — even the most 
sanguine — would be disposed to make. But practical experience 
for a number of years has convinced me that when we come to 
talk about income, by far the most promising source of income is 
the non-contributing element in our contributing churches; and 
while we should not withhold from these smaller organizations 
every possible influence that may reach them sympathetically and 
bring them into this blessed cooperation for mankind and for the 
Saviour of mankind, I tell you, brethren, honestly — and this 
grows upon me rather than retreats from the category of my 
convictions — that we need to bestir ourselves with redoubled 



DISCUSSION AS TO FUTURE POLICY OF BOARD AT HOME. 275 

diligence in behalf of the constituency in the larger churches, 
nominally contributing, that are getting away from us. 

Now, how are we going to do that? How are we going to reach 
both classes? I am in hearty sympathy with these resolutions 
of the president, and I believe that something will come of them, 
and that the wisdom of the Prudential Committee applied to this 
practical question will supply an important aid. I have long been 
of the opinion that we must adopt agencies that do not depend 
upon a favorable Sunday or a favorable Wednesday night for the 
best execution. I think we ought in some way to bring into prac- 
tical operation a series of agencies for which one night in the week 
is about as good as any other night. I got some light on that in 
respect to our last campaign. I hope it is not the last large, 
general, enthusiastic campaign, under the splendid leadership of 
our home secretary, that we shall see. For myself I have not yet 
been able to construct a satisfactory reason why we should not 
even have another in this coming year very much like it. But 
as I went about from city to city among all the leading Congre- 
gational centers in the interior states to '' set up " — to use a 
common phrase — this campaign, to get their assent, their consent, 
their promise of cooperation, and a preliminary organization, some 
light dawned upon me that I had not fully seen before. Wlien, as 
in Dubuque, in Topeka, in Kansas City, and in many other places 
of like size and quality, I had the privilege of sitting down at a 
table, which they themselves had bountifully and hospitably 
spread, with from twenty to twenty-five of the best men of those 
cities, — I will not say Congregationalists; they were that, but 
they were also the best men of those cities, — and talking face to 
face and heart to heart with them upon this great practical ques- 
tion, expressive and creative of the best life of our Congregational 
Christianity, I tell you my breath was fairly taken away again 
and again by the almost instant and hearty assent which every 
man of them gave to the plan, and I said to myself, " More of 
this sort of thing ought to be going on." What hinders a good 
secretary or a good agent, fitted for such work as this, from taking 
to himself an area like, let us say, Rockford Association or Elgin 
Association, and meeting on Monday night all the working forces 
of a given church, including the pastor of that church, for a similar 
conference, and then on Tuesday night another, and on Wednesday 
night another, and on Thursday night another, and on Friday 
night another, and then on Sunday, of course, he will be fresh, 



276 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

with some fresh material, to make a strong and effective presen- 
tation of the cause! Meantime he has been doing his most effective 
work in this personal sort of appeal, in organizing under a clear 
light the forces and the activities which should yield the largest 
results. 

Now, then, by such a multiplication, two or three men do not 
need to be estimated as to the value of their services by the num- 
ber of Sundays there are in the year for each one of them, but 
almost, you might say, by the number of week nights. Then how 
the ignorance will be scattered, and how the light will shine! For 
there is a whole lot of ignorance still. I got a letter the other day 
addressed, '' American Board of Home and Foreign Missions." 
And that wasn't all. It proceeded to say, " Dear Ladies," — 
which suggested to me, what is in some respects partly true, that 
the ladies have been in evidence very much, and we may sit at 
their feet and learn some things as to methods. They have been 
doing just about this thing of which I have been speaking very 
successfully for quite a while. I got another letter addressed, 
" American Board of Foreign Millions." Well, that wasn't so 
very far out of the way. I trust the sense of that responsibility 
will grow upon us. I didn't get the letter — though one of your 
secretaries did — from the man who said he didn't want his gift 
to go out of the country and therefore he was going to contribute 
it to the American Board! Well, if we must have ignorance, that 
is as harmless a kind as any I know of. Still it is better for us to 
dissipate the ignorance, and in our practical time, with such 
multiplied agencies as seem to be just waiting our hand, under 
Christ, it seems to me we ought to relieve our constituency of 
very much of this ignorance that still rests upon them like a fog- 
bank and open up fields of larger service in the decade that is 
b efore us, larger than in any of the decades that have gone before. 



DISCUSSION AS TO FUTURE POLICY OF BOARD AT HOME. 277 



Discussion, — Rev. H. Melville Tenney, Berkeley, Cal., 
District Secretary for the Pacific Coast. 

Mr. President: May I say one word with reference to the problem 
of the small churches, the non-contributing churches? It depends 
a good deal upon how those churches are planted, whether they 
are going to be contributors for the world-wide work or not. Let 
me illustrate by reference to the churches up in the northwest of 
our great country, where, as they say, they grow umbrellas out 
of their heads, to have them with them all the time when it rains — 
that magnificent empire of Washington. I had the privilege of 
speaking in a little church just a month old in the city of Tacoma, 
a year or two ago. They had no ceiling to their building; the 
building itself did not belong to the church, but was loaned to them. 
The pastor said, after I had spoken to that interested, bright-faced 
audience: "We are just a month old today, and we will celebrate 
the beginning of our second month of existence by taking an 
offering for the American Board." I have watched the growth of 
that church. It is becoming a power in the community, and its 
gifts to the American Board are doubling up every year. How 
was it planted? I venture to mention the name of the person 
who planted it. It is a good foreign missionary name, and a good 
home missionary name, — Greene, that famous Sunday-school 
worker in Washington. All Sunday-schools that are organized 
in that state, out of which come these small churches, are planted 
on the basis of the kingdom. Very soon those Sunday-schools 
understand that their work, even in the days when they cannot 
pay their own expenses, is to be in part a contribution to the king- 
dom abroad. They annex the w^ide field to* their little parishes 
and thus get a broad outlook from the beginning. From churches 
thus planted in Washington, on the hillsides and by the streams 
and in the woods, you will not have much trouble to get offerings. 
That is one of the reasons why, this year, Washington has made 
the remarkable gain in its contributions to the American Board 
of one hundred and thirty-three per cent. 

Now, if we can have all our churches founded and pastors 
trained so that they will recognize that their field is the world, 
and not merely the little home parish, if they can break down the 
walls of provincialism and see the vision as the Master saw it, and 



278 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

feel the throb and thrill of his anxiety for the world, there will be 
no trouble about non-contributing churches. 

I want to say a word also about the way in which we should 
multiply our agencies. I am happy in having able volunteer 
helpers on the Pacific coast, in the different parts of that great 
parish, for my parish is as large as any of yours. You can swing a 
line eight hundred miles from San Francisco and it will only reach 
the northern border of it, and cut a little beyond the southern 
border and barely reach the eastern limit. To include Hawaii, 
making it the western border, you must extend the line to twenty- 
five hundred miles into the Pacific. Being so far distant from the 
remote parts of my district, it is absolutely impossible for me to 
cultivate them without local assistance. So we have developed 
voluntary field secretaries up in Washington and down in South- 
ern California. I wish I could tell you of the self-denying labors 
of two of these in Washington. One of them is here in this meet- 
ing and you know his efficiency, — Rev. E. Lincoln Smith, — and 
the other is Dr. Penrose. They have worked splendidly this year, 
as they do every year, and a good part of that notable gain up 
there is to be attributed to their efforts in sending out circulars, 
writing personal letters to pastors, taking the missionary when we 
send one to them, and making out his itinerary and backing him 
up. In Southern California one pastor, chairman of the local 
committee there, Mr. Larkin, of Ontario, has not only written 
circular letters and sent them to the churches, but he has written 
seventy-five or a hundred personal letters to different members in 
those churches, and not only that, but he has organized little 
group meetings of pastors, in which they went on their knees 
before God in planning the campaign for their churches. Is it 
any wonder that Southern California, from which we asked an 
amount double what it gave last year, gave us instead of this a 
gain of one hundred and twenty-six per cent? 

I tell you, friends, if you can get the pastors on fire, and ready 
to work for the great field, in moments that they can find without 
sacrificing their own work, — and they never sacrifice their own 
work; they come back to it with a glow and an enthusiasm and 
a spiritual power that uplifts their own people every time; they 
are better men for the home work if they do this work for the 
foreign field, — it will go far toward solving the problem. I thank 
God that I am privileged to work alongside of such men. One 
man out of this congregation, who has-been fired with the desire 



DISCUSSION AS TO FUTURE POLICY OF BOARD AT HOME. 279 

to reach these small churcheS; came to me yesterday and said: 
" I am ready to go back if you will give me a good layman and 
devote next year " — and he meant without any pay — '* to 
getting the non-contributing churches in our district into line." 
No doubt in California and Oregon and Washington there will be 
men springing up all along the hne ready to do that thing. We 
don't need any more district secretaries out there, — unless you 
can get a better one than you already have, and that is easily 
done, — for we have good volunteer secretaries growing up that 
will do splendid work, without pay, in all parts of the Pacific coast. 



280 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 



THURSDAY EVENING SESSION. 

At the Methodist church the Board assembled at half past 
seven o'clock. After an opening. hymn Rev. John R. Thurston 
offered prayer. Resolutions were adopted which have been 
already given, for the sake of completeness of treatment, in the 
report of the Thursday afternoon session. 

An address was then delivered by Rev. S. M. Zwemer, D.D., of 
Arabia, of the Board of Foreign Missions of the Reformed Church. 
Rev. F. P. Haggard, Secretary of the American Baptist Missionary 
Union, offered prayer. Secretary Barton then gave his address 
upon the '' Moslems in Turkey." Greetings were received from 
the Woman's Missionary Union of the Montgomery Presbyterian 
Southern churches, at that time holding a meeting at Lynchburg, 
Va. The third address was by Rev. Henry G. Bissell, of India. 
In speaking upon " India's Millions for Christ," he referred to 
messages of greeting to the Board which had been received from 
the missionaries and converts of the Marathi Mission. These will 
be found printed directly after his address. 

The meeting closed with prayer and benediction by Rev. 
Edward L. Smith, of Seattle. 

At the Congregational church in North Adams an overflow 
meeting was held; addresses, of which there is no full report, were 
delivered by Rev. Douglas Mackenzie, D.D., president of Hartford 
Theological Seminary, upon work in South Africa, and by Rev. 
Frederick B. Bridgman, a missionary from that field. There were 
shorter addresses also by Rev. L. P. Peet, of the American Board 
College in Foochow, China, and Rev. J. G. Chamberlain, of India. 
There were also brief talks by four native Christians, Frederick 
R. Ponce, of Mexico; Rev. O. M. Chamberlain, of Armenia; 
Rev. S. Sato, of Japan; and Philip Reitinger, of Bohemia, all of 
whom had spoken previously on Wednesday. 



THE EVANGELIZATION OF THE MOHAMMEDAN WORLD. 281 



THE EVANGELIZATION OF THE MOHAMMEDAN WORLD 
IN THIS GENERATION. 

Rev. Samuel M. Zwemer, D.D., of Arabia, 
A Missionary of the Reformed Church. 

The occasion of this gathering makes our subject most appro- 
priate, since it reminds us not only of the great work of the Ameri- 
can Board in the Turkish Empire, but of the fact that Samuel 
Mills and his associates were not unmindful of this very problem. 
We read that " Loomis contended it was premature; that if 
missionaries should be sent to Asia they would be murdered; 
that Christian armies must first subdue the country before the 
gospel could be sent to the Turks and the Arabs." We know 
that Loomis was wrong and Mills right. No Christian armies 
ever subdued Turkey or Arabia, yet both are mission fields. And 
then this is the year of the Cairo Conference. The appeal from 
an ecumenical council-of-war, such as that gathering, should find 
echo here and now. The great task to which Christ calls the 
church in this century is the evangelization of the Mohammedan 
world. In urging this colossal problem upon your attention as a 
practical one we are not unmindful of 

I. The Vast Proportions of the Undertaking. 

To belittle it would be to belie all knowledge of its character. 
Because of its geographical extent, its strength, and its long neglect 
by the church, Islam has grown to gigantic proportions. Like a 
mighty Goliath it defies the armies of the living God and the 
progress of Christ's kingdom! In three continents it presents an 
almost unbroken front, and is armed with a proud and aggressive 
spirit. At a very conservative estimate there are over two 
hundred and thirty million Mohammedans, one seventh of the 
human race! Islam's dominion stretches from Sierra Leone in 
Africa to Canton in China, and from the steppes of Siberia to 
Zanzibar and Sumatra. In China there are thirty milUon Moslems; 
in some places north of the Yangtse River one third of the people 
belong to that faith. In India there are sixty-two million Moham- 
medans, and the real problem today is not " Krishna or Christ," 
but Mohammed or the Messiah. One seventh of the whole popu- 



282 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

lation of Asia is Moslem. Every third man, woman, or child in 
Africa is a believer in Mohammed. The total Moslem population 
of Africa is over fifty-eight million, while there are already four 
miUion Moslems south of the equator, and the number is daily 
increasing. Nor may we belittle the real strength of Islam. 
Among the elements of real strength in Islam are the following 
truths and methods. Violence and falsehood are never elements 
of strength in any religion, although they may account for its 
rapid spread and apparent success. Islam is a religion without 
caste. It ignores all distinctions founded upon race, color, or 
nationality. All believers belong to the highest caste, and all 
unbelievers are out-castes. The Hindoo who turns Mohammedan 
loses his caste, but becomes a member of the great brotherhood 
of Islam. Slaves have held thrones and founded dynasties. The 
first one who led the call to prayer was Bilal, a Negro of Medina. 
Again, its creed contains much fundamental truth. This is very 
plain, if we repeat the Apostles' Creed, the universal symbol of 
Christendom, in such form as a Moslem would accept : '' I believe 
in God . . . Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus 
Christ . . . conceived (miraculously) and born of the Virgin 
Mary. . . . He ascended into heaven, . . . and from thence he 
shall come. ... I beheve ... in the forgiveness of sins, the 
resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting." Although the 
heart of the creed is omitted, namely, the Trinity and the Atone- 
ment, how much remains that is common to Christianity and 
Islam ! What a contrast to heathen religions and even to Judaism ! 
Intolerance of error is also an element of strength. It is the 
Puritan spirit of Islam; and although iconoclastic, and often 
violent to the point of fanaticism, it is a praiseworthy trait in any 
religion. Islam has in it the stuff that martyrs and reformers 
are made of; its professors are '^ valiant for the truth " and have 
the spinal column of conviction, and desire for conquest. Islam 
is one of the few missionary religions of the world. It began with 
the Saracen conquest and continued for thirteen centuries, until 
the Wahabi revival, and the Pan-Islamic movement of today. 
In the words of the Koran, the Moslem must '^ fight against 
infidels till strife be at an end and the religion is God's alone." 
All these elements of strength have become deep rooted in life, 
literature, politics, and art, by the lapse of thirteen centuries. 
And throughout all these centuries Islam was neglected by the 
church. Between Raymond Lull and Henry Martyn, the two 



THE EVANGELIZATION OF THE MOHAMMEDAN WORLD. 283 

lonely pioneers who tried to arouse the church, five centuries 
intervened without missions to Moslems. The church was ages 
behind time and lost splendid opportunities. In Persia one 
thousand years, in Arabia twelve centuries, passed before missions 
challenged the supremacy of Mohammed. It is a stupendous 
problem, but its vast proportions do not take away our respon- 
sibility, nor may we seek to escape the task by denying 

II. The Necessity of this Undertaking. 

The Mohammedan world must be evangelized, cost what it 
may, for Islam is inadequate to meet the needs of any land or of 
a single soul. The facts and the fruits of this religion prove it. 
Its distorted theology offers no worthy conception of God, and is, 
on the authority of so unprejudiced a judge as James Freeman 
Clarke, the very worst form of monotheism. Although acknowl- 
edging Christ as a prophet, Islam denies the deity, the Incarnation, 
and the atoning death of Christ, and thus by its thoroughly anti- 
Christian character betrays the Son of Man, like Judas, with a 
kiss. The degraded and degrading ethics of Islam are based on 
a low ideal of character, fixed forever as the high-water mark of 
holiness. To be like Mohammed is to be perfect. The deep- 
rooted sensuality of the prophet has borne bitter fruit in all ages 
and all Moslem lands. The first chapter of Romans is a true 
picture of the conditions existing in many Moslem lands today; 
Baluchistan and Persia are examples. Among the entire Shiah 
sect, numbering ten millions, lying (under the name of Kitman- 
ud-din) has become a fine art, sanctified by their religion. Islam 
is spiritually bankrupt. 

The five pillars of the Mohammedan faith are all broken reeds, 
by the solemn test of age-long experience; because their creed is 
only a half truth, and its '' pure monotheism " does not satisfy 
the soul's need of a mediator and an atonement for sin. Their 
prayers are formal and vain repetitions, without demanding or 
producing holiness in the one that uses them. Their fasting is 
productive of two distinct evils wherever observed; it manu- 
factures an unlimited number of hypocrites who profess to keep 
the fast and do not do so, and in the second place the reaction, 
which occurs at sunset of every night of Ramadhan, tends to 
produce revelling and dissipation of the loAvest and most degrading 
type. Their almsgiving stimulates indolence, and has produced 



284 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

that worst of social parasites — the dervish or fakir. Finally, 
their pilgrimages to Mecca and Medina and Eerbela are a public 
scandal even to Moslem morality, so that the " holy cities " are 
hotbeds of vice, and plague spots in the body politic. 

It has often been asserted that Islam is the proper religion for 
Arabia. The Bedouin now say: " Mohammed's religion can 
never have been intended for us; it demands ablution, but we 
have no water; fasting, but we always fast; almsgiving, but we 
have no money; pilgrimage, but Allah is everywhere." And 
Palgrave's prophecy still awaits fulfillment: " When the Koran 
and Mecca shall have disappeared from Arabia, then, and then 
only, can we expect to see the Arab assume that place in the 
ranks of civilization from which Mohammed and his book have, 
more than any other cause, long held him back." 

Mohammedan progress in Africa is progress up an impasse. It 
enables the pagans to advance a short distance, and then checks 
their progress by an impassable wall of prejudice, ignorance, and 
spiritual blindness. Islam can do for the Sudan no more than it 
did for Morocco. 

The Mohammedan world is without Christ, and, therefore, with- 
out hope for the life to come. There is no hope in their death. 
Solfian el Thuri, a companion of Mohammed, cried out on his 
death-bed: " I am going on a way I know not of, to appear before 
the Lord whom I have never seen." Omar ibn el Khattab, one 
of the greatest and best of the caliphs, was greatly depressed in 
view of death, and said, ^' Whom are ye trying to deceive? Had 
I the whole East and the West, gladly would I give up all to be 
dehvered from this awful terror that is hanging over me. Would 
that I never had existed! Would that my mother never had 
borne me! " 

These moral, social, and spiritual conditions show the necessity 
of evangelizing the Moslem world. There is no hope for it, save 
in Christianity. Jesus Christ is the missing factor in their creed. 
He alone can purify their social life. He alone can satisfy their 
spiritual hunger. 

So vast, so long neglected, and so necessary an undertaking as 
the evangelization of the Mohammedan world is not a Utopian 
scheme, but an entirely practicable and possible enterprise. We 
emphasize 



THE EVANGELIZATION OF THE MOHAMMEDAN WORLD. 285 



III. The Possibility of thiSjUndertaking. 

Here and now, " we can do it if we will," because unprecedented 
opportunities are ours, and infinite resources are at our disposal. 

The present political division of the Mohammedan world is a 
challenge of world-wide opportunity. How great has been the 
fall of Islam since the beginning of the past century! She has 
practically lost her temporal power, and never again will the 
Crescent rule the world. The area of the present caliphate has 
dwindled to smaller proportions than it had at the time of Moham- 
med's death. Suleiman the Magnificent would not recognize 
in the Ottoman provinces that which was once a world-kingdom. 
Only eighteen millions out of two hundred and thirty million 
Moslems are under the political control of the sultan. Much 
more than one half of the Moslem population of the world is under 
Christian rule. 

A consideration of the languages spoken by Moslems today is 
a further proof of unprecedented opportunity. Once the Moham- 
medan world was Arabian, now it is polyglot. The Koran is an 
Arabic book and has never been translated by Moslems into other 
languages for religious use. It is an unintelligible book to three 
fourths of its readers. What spiritual comfort have the twenty 
million Chinese Moslems from the Arabic they repeat daily in 
their prayers? How little of the real meaning of Islam is plain 
to the sixty-two millions of India, nearly all ignorant of Arabic! 
But the Bible, — sharper than any two-edged Saracen blade and 
our weapon of warfare, — the Bible speaks all languages and is 
the best printed and cheapest selling book in the world. This 
universal, everlasting, glorious gospel is not handicapped as is the 
Koran, which by form and matter is wholly and hopelessly pro- 
vincial. The Beirut Press has issued over a million volumes of 
the Arabic scriptures since it was founded. The demand for the 
vernacular Bible in Arabia, Persia, and the Turkish empire is 
phenomenal. Not only has the Bible been translated into every 
Moslem tongue, but a large and important body of Christian 
literature, controversial and educational, is ready for Moslems. 
This is specially true of Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Urdu, and 
BengaU, the chief literary languages of Islam. Every Moham- 
medan objection to Christianity has been met in printed apologetic. 
The weapons are ready for the conflict. 

The disintegration of Islam makes possible the speedy evan- 



286 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

gelization of Moslem lands. Not only have the literary weapons 
been forged and the sword of the Spirit prepared for the conquest, 
but the ranks of the enemy are breaking. Mighty and irresistible 
forces are at work in Islam itself to prepare the way for the coming 
of the King. Thousands of Moslems have grown dissatisfied with 
their old faith, and of tens of thousands, one can scarcely assert 
that they are Moslems at all, save in mere name. 

The Wahabi movement in Arabia, the Shathaliyas in Syria, 
the widespread teaching of false Mahdis and Messiahs, the growth 
of mysticism, and the undermining of the old orthodox Islam by 
the rationalistic new Islam, — all these are signs of the coming 
dawn, and are pregnant with opportunity. From every quarter 
comes testimony that the attitude of Moslems toward Christianity 
has changed for the better in the past decade. In India, Islam 
has abandoned controversial positions which were once thought 
impregnable. Instead of denying the integrity of the Bible they 
now write commentaries on it. Fanaticism decreases with the 
march of civilization and commerce. The cradle of Islam is a 
mission field, and a railway is being built to Mecca by the sultan 
for the King of kings. 

Every strategic center of population in the Mohammedan 
world is already occupied for Christ. This startling fact shows 
the guiding hand of God in preparation for the conflict. I took 
the World's Almanac for 1906 and found the list of cities which 
have over one hundred thousand inhabitants. These are the 
places where work is now carried on for Moslems, directly or 
indirectly: Calcutta, Constantinople, Bombay, Cairo, Hyderabad, 
Alexandria, Teheran, Lucknow, Rangoon, Damascus, Delhi, 
Lahore, Smyrna, Cawnpore, Agra, Tabriz, Allahabad, Tunis, 
Bagdad, Fez, Aleppo, and Beirut. This is not a mere coincidence, 
but a fact full of meaning, and a challenge of God's providence to 
win and use these Gibraltars of population, in the midst of the 
teeming millions of Islam, as points of vantage for Jesus Christ 
and his kingdom. 

In some Moslem lands, fifty years ago without a Protestant 
missionary, every key-position is now a mission station. 

Results already achieved prove the possibility of evangelizing 
these millions. Less than a century ago there was not one 
Protestant worker in any Moslem land. At that time, apostasy 
from Islam meant death to the apostate. Now there are Moslem 
converts in every land where work has been attempted, fanaticism 



THE EVANGELIZATIOX OF THE MOHAMMEDAN WORLD. 287 

has decreased, and many converted Moslenis are preaching the 
gospel. In North India there are nearly two hundred Christian 
pastors, catechists, or teachers who are converts or the children 
of converts from Islam. There is hardly a Christian congregation 
in the Punjab which does not have some members formerly in the 
ranks of Islam. Thousands of Moslem youth are receiving a 
Christian education in Egypt, India, Java, and Sumatra. In 
Java and Sumatra there are over twenty-four thousand living 
converts from Islam. Some belong to self-supporting churches. 
And in Java alone there are from three to four hundred converts 
annually. The results, however, are meagre in comparison with 
the resources, both material and spiritual, which are at our dis- 
posal in answer to prayer and which have never been used in this 
conflict. The Mohammedan world is a challenge to our faith, — 
faith that can remove mountains. The power of prevailing 
prayer has never yet been adequately applied by the church to 
this mighty problem. We need a consuming love and a willing- 
ness to suffer. With an army of missionaries like Henry Martyn 
or Bishop French, what might not be accomplished in a single 
generation? Were the church awake to this great problem, and 
were our efforts at all commensurate with our opportunities, it 
would, I believe, be possible to carry the gospel throughout every 
Moslem land in this generation. Not only can- we do it, but we 
7nust do it . Consider, finally, 

IV. The Urgency of this Undertaking. 

The whole horizon of the Mohammedan world is lurid with a 
storm that may burst upon us at any moment. Islam has always 
been, and is now, aggressive. Its numbers are increasing today 
in India, Burma, the East Indies, West Africa, Uganda, the Congo 
Basin, and all Abyssinia, In West Africa and Nigeria mission- 
aries speak of a " Mohammedan peril." Dr. Miller testifies that 
the number of Moslems is increasing greatly in West Africa. 
" Islam and Christianity between them are spoiling heathenism, 
and will probably divide the pagan peoples in less than fifty years." 
Rev. A. D. Dixey says of Khelat, in Baluchistan, that the inhabi- 
tants are only nominal Mohammedans and are bigoted. ''They 
will listen liow, but in a few years they will have become fa- 
natical. Now is the chance to evangelize them." The Sudan 
United Mission calls the attention of Christendom to the crisis 
in Hansa-land. All the heathen populations of the central Sudan 



288 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

will go over to Islam unless the church awakes to its opportunity. 
It is now or never; it is Islam or Christ! The activity of the 
numerous dervish orders, especially of the Sanusiya dervishes, 
the unrest in Egypt and Arabia, the insolent threats against 
Christians in Sumatra, the Pan-Islamic movement with its 
dozen publications, — all these are signs of the times. 

Dr. Hartman, of Berlin, writing as a statesman, said recently: 
'^ The peoples of Europe should never forget that the spread of 
Mohammedanism is a great danger to Christian civilization and 
culture, and that cooperation among themselves against the 
extension of its influence and power is one of the crying needs of 
the hour." 

Archibald R. Colquhoun, in a remarkable article in the North 
American Review for June on Pan-Islam, states: ''The outlook 
for those Christian European powers which have large African 
possessions and spheres of influence is increasingly grave. . . . 
Pan-Islamites must not be too sure that the spirit they are evok- 
ing in the Dark Continent is one that will remain under their 
control." 

Sir Edward Grey's address in the House of Commons, on the 
situation in Egypt, was a warning not to speak against the 
Liberal ministry above a whisper, lest the avalanche of Moslem 
fanaticism should fall. In Sumatra, we are told, the Armenian 
massacres stimulated their fanaticism so much as to produce 
insolent threats against Christians. The Japanese war has 
aroused hopes that all Europeans will eventually be expelled. 
The visit of the German emperor to the sultan was regarded as 
an act of homage, and the present of horses which he brought as 
a payment of +ribute. 

We must meet this Pan-Islamic challenge, but not on a political 
basis. The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty 
through God's Spirit. The love of Jesus Christ, incarnated in 
hospitals, in schools, in tactful preaching, and in the lives of 
devoted missionaries, will irresistibly win Moslems and disarm 
their fanaticism. We have nothing to fear save our own sloth 
and inactivity. The time is ripe for a world-wide spiritual 
crusade for the conquest of Islam. " God wills it." " Father, the 
hour is come. Glorify thy son." His rightful glory has been 
given to Mohammed for many ages in these many lands. Glorify 
thyself, Christ, by the victory in this conflict. " God wills it." 
— the evangehzation of the Mohammedan world in this generation. 



MOSLEMS IN TURKEY. 289 



MOSLEMS IN TURKEY. 

Rev. James L. Barton, D.D., 

Secretary of the Foreign Department. 

This is the first time that the question of missionary work for 
Moslems has been openly discussed upon the platform of the 
American Board. Hitherto it has been feared that Moslem 
fanaticism might rise in violence against the missionaries at the 
front if it were plainly stated that this Board is endeavoring, 
through its missionaries, to make Jesus Christ in his beauty and 
saving power known to the followers of Mohammed. For nearly 
four score and ten years we have maintained a silence that has 
been misinterpreted, both in the East and in the West. Widely 
has the uncontradicted but erroneous statement been circulated 
that " mission boards are not working for the Christianization of 
Moslems " and that " no Moslems become Christian.'' 

Last April witnessed a long step in advance in the conference 
in Cairo, Egypt, where some seventy delegates assembled from 
.all over the world to discuss this question. Since the conference 
was in a Moslem country, secrecy was maintained at that time, 
to prevent the breaking up of the gathering. Two volumes are 
soon to be issued from the press of the Revells, giving to the world 
a full report of the proceedings of the first great world conference 
of Christians upon the subject of Mohammedanism and its relation 
to Christianity. Can we better observe this centennial of a grand 
advance in the aggressive spiritual conquest of the world than by 
inaugurating a new advance into a world occupied by two hun- 
dred and thirty million souls who know neither the Christ nor the 
Father? 

The new century of American foreign missions calls for a new 
vision of the Moslem world in its strength, its needs, its accessi- 
bility, its promise, as well as in its antagonism to Christ and to 
those who bear his name. 

The American Board comes into contact with Mohammedans in 
fourteen of its missions, only four of which are under a Moham- 
medan government. In ten of the missions in which we are at 
work, and where Moslems dwell, like India, China, Africa, and 
Mindanao in the Philippines, there is ample religious liberty so 



290 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

far as the government is concerned. Our four missions in Turkey 
are entirely under a Mohammedan government, where the state 
is identified with Islam. Here there is no liberty for a Moham- 
medan to change his religion, while nearly all of the high official 
positions in the military and civil hsts are filled by Mohammedans 
alone. They control the processes of the government and, in 
spite of many promises granting freedom of conscience to all 
subjects of the empire, they are able so to administer the affairs 
of state that Moslems clearly understand that no change of religion 
will be tolerated. 

Significant Facts in the Turkey Field. 

Turkey occupies a position strategic to the Moslem world. In 
its geographical location it commands the entrance to Persia, and 
is in close proximity to the North Africa Mohammedan states and 
to Arabia. The sultan of Turkey holds in his possession the sacred 
cities of the two hundred and thirty milhon Mohammedans of the 
world. He alone is the guardian of the cities of Mecca and Medina, 
to which Moslem pilgrims resort by thousands each year. He is 
also the custodian of the sacred relics of Mohammed, kept in the 
seragho at Constantinople. For four hundred years the sultan 
of Turkey has held the undisputed title of '' cahph " of the Moslem , 
world. No one knows just how much this may mean, and yet 
we know that to no other city and to no other monarch do the 
Mohammedans of all races look with the same universal reverence 
with which they look to the sultan of Turkey, and to the city of 
the sacred relics. Pohtically and religiously Turkey is the strong- 
hold of Islam, and the sultan of Turkey is its supreme high priest. 

Turkey Mohammedan. There are in Turkey, in the fields in 
which this Board is at work, between ten and twelve million 
Mohammedans. These include all of the official classes in the 
Turkish empire north of Syria, as well as a great mass of peas- 
antry. These do not represent a hor(jogeneous race, but different 
races, often preying upon one another, and frequently in open 
hostility to the central government. These Moslem peoples 
include the Turks of Asia Minor, the Albanians of Macedonia, the 
Kurds of Eastern Turkey, the Caucasians of Asia Minor and 
Eastern Turkey, besides Turcomans of northern Syria. The 
dominant people are the Turks. The other races mentioned are 
more or less loyal, according to circumstances. By far the greater 
number of Moslems in Turkey are peasants who live a simple life, 



MOSLEMS IN TURKEY. . 291 

taking little interest in the government or in religion. These are 
ignorant for the most part, are gentle, hospitable, and upon the 
whole inclined to be kindly disposed. Owing to the long conflict 
with Christian races, the ruling Turks are generally strongly 
fanatical in religious matters. The peasant in the remoter dis- 
tricts does not take his rehgion so seriously. 

The Mohammedans of no country have ever had an opportunity 
to know Jesus Christ in his beauty and power. From the first, 
Islam has been in conflict with Christianity, attempting to con- 
quer by the sword of Mohammed the Christian races to which it 
had access, until it was stayed in its onward progress at the walls 
of Vienna in 1683. All war is holy war with the Mohammedans, 
and holy war with them has always been war with Christians. 
Their histories, oral or written, record and repeat the story of 
the Crusades, the conflict with the Christians in Spain, their clash 
at arms with the Greeks, Armenians, and Russians, as well as 
with other Christian peoples, until they have nearly incapacitated 
themselves to think of Christians in any other light than as people 
to be conquered or forcibly resisted. All of these experiences 
with Christianity, until modern missions were begun among them, 
made them only hate the name of Christ. They had seen Uttle or 
nothing of the gentleness, beauty, and strength of Jesus Christ. 
Every Moslem tradition and national experience is hostile to 
Christianity. 

Religious liberty in Turkey. If all that is required in a country, 
to assure full religious liberty, is a decree to that effect from the 
highest authority in the realm, then the subjects of Turkey have 
religious liberty. If it means freedom to worship God according 
to the dictates of one's conscience, then there is little religious 
liberty in Turkey for its Moslem subjects. In 1839 an imperial 
rescript was issued, guaranteeing protection to every subject of 
the empire irrespective of race or religion. In 1843 a youth of 
twenty years was beheaded in the streets of Constantinople, and 
his body exposed in the streets for three days, because after once 
declaring himself a Mohammedan he had become a Christian. 
Under pressure from the European powers the sultan, in 1844, 
gave a written pledge that he would take effectual measures to 
prevent further persecution for changes in religious belief. This 
was repeated in the famous Hatti Sherif qf 1856, which was under- 
stood by the Moslems as guaranteeing to them imperial protection 
even though they should change their religion. The Treaty of 



292 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

Paris that year recognized this imperial edict as pledging the 
government of Turkey to full rehgious liberty for all its subjects. 

Mohammedans began openly to purchase copies of the Turkish 
Testament, and to study Christianity. Turks in considerable 
numbers, in different parts of the empire, became Christians and 
were baptized. Among these were some officials, and in one 
instance in Constantinople a Turkish Inman, or preacher, began 
openly to proclaim Christ. By 1860 fifteen Moslem converts had 
been baptized in Constantinople alone, and the spirit of inquiry 
spread up to 1864. In the summer of that year, as the Turkish 
congregation was coming from its Sabbath morning service, the 
preacher and some twenty members were arrested and, without 
trial, some of them were sent into exile. 

From that day to the present time Moslems have been made 
to understand that there is no liberty for them to embrace Chris- 
tianity. In spite of this fact, many Moslems have accepted Jesus 
Christ as Redeemer and Lord, for which confession some have fled 
the country, others have met severe persecution there, while not 
a few have been quietly put to death. 

These conditions have prevented open effort for the Moham- 
medans, and have made Moslems who have become behevers in 
Christ slow to make pubhc profession of their faith. At the same 
time Mohammedans have not been- indifferent to the Christian 
effort put forth for them. 

Christian Missions are Strongly Intrenched in the Turkish 

Empire. 

Beginning with 1819 Christian missionaries have been laying 
foundations in that country for Christian institutions. One after 
another, the great strategic centers in the empire have been occu- 
pied, until at the present time in Constantinople, in Smyrna, in 
Damascus, in Salonica, in Beirut, in Bagdad, and in a hundred 
other cities, there are established substantial evangelical churches, 
Christian schools of all grades, and in many of them Christian 
hospitals, for both men and women. At Constantinople and 
Beirut there are extensive publishing houses, that are issuing 
annually millions of pages of Christian literature in every language 
spoken by the leading races of the empire. 

Over six hundred foreign missionaries, representing both 
European and American societies, are located at these important 
centers of missionary operation. It is true that for the most part 



MOSLEMS IN TURKEY. • 293 

the effort of these missionaries has been directed hitherto, not to 
reaching the Moslem populations, but to the evangelization of the 
nominally Christian races, like the Syrians, Armenians, Greeks, 
and Bulgarians. In Syria, and in the southern and western por- 
tions of Asia Minor, the Christians and the Turks speak the same 
language, so that the missionaries in those regions are able to 
converse freely with the Moslems, and they in turn can under- 
stand the language used in public worship. This is not the case 
in the northern and eastern portions of the country. 

In addition to this missionary force, there are in the country 
over two thousand trained native Christian pastors, preachers, 
evangelists, and teachers who speak the languages of the country. 

Preparations for Advance. 

1. Mission stations are planted in all parts of the empire, and 
missionaries upon the ground in large numbers know the country 
and the character and needs of the Mohammedans. They speak 
the language of the Moslems, enjoy their confidence, and have 
access to them. 

2. Colleges are firmly established from the Black Sea to Arabia, 
and from Persia to Greece, in which Mohammedans can be 
received, but where Christian young men and women of other 
races are trained in the Turkish and Arabic language in prepara- 
tion for preaching the gospel to the Mohammedans. Thousands 
of graduates from these schools are found today in all parts of 
the empire. 

While the highest of the Christian educational institutions of 
the country are attended by but few Moslem pupils, the thirst for 
the new learning is present among the Mohammedans also, and 
they have introduced much that is modern into their own national 
schools. Many of the official classes have taken courses of study 
in Europe, and are thus the champions of a better educational 
system for their own youth of both sexes. In many a Christian 
school today in Turkey, Moslem and Christian youths recite in 
the same classes, join in the same sports, and regard each other as 
friends. 

3. PubUcation work is well estabUshed, and in spite of a strict 
censorship, millions of pages of enlightening literature, as well as 
that which is directly Christian, are issued annually from the 
mission presses. This work can be almost indefinitely increased 
in new languages, so that every Moslem race in Turkey can thereby 



294 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

be directly reached. The extensive educational institutions in 
the empire give to the publication work greatly enhanced power 
and influence. 

The wide circulation of Christian literature in the Turkish and 
Arabic languages has already had boundless influence. All 
modern scientific and historic literature is anti-Mohammedan. 
For nearly ninety years the mission presses have been kept busy 
with printing a religious and educational literature in the languages 
read by the Moslems. This has been more widely circulated than 
any power upon earth can trace. Moslems read and discuss what 
to them are the marvels of modern science and the revelations of 
history. By this they are lifted out of their old narrow life and 
thought and made to live in a new and modern world. The Bible, 
also, in whole and in parts, has been printed and circulated among 
the Moslems by millions of copies. These are not given away, but 
sold, insuring a reading and careful preservation. Last year, 
upon the press at Beirut alone, nearly fifty million pages of the 
Bible in Arabic were printed for circulation among Moslems 
exclusively. The Mohammedans as a class are not today ignorant 
of the true character of Jesus Christ or of the teachings of the 
gospels. 

4. The lives of the missionaries, during the nearly three genera- 
tions of occupancy of that country, have had a mighty effect in 
breaking down old prejudices against Christianity. The Moham- 
medan appreciates a life of self-sacrificing service for others, and 
to them this has become an entirely new revelation of the spirit 
of Christianity. They have seen this spirit multiplied in the lives 
of native Christians, and have noted the fact that those who take 
the New Testament as their standard live cleaner, more honest, 
and more truthful lives. In this way they have been led to see 
the beauty that there is in Jesus Christ, and to recognize the fact 
that belief in him works a change to human life that is praise- 
worthy. In the wide contact of the Moslems with missionaries 
and native evangelical Christians throughout the empire, they 
have come to hold an opinion of Christianity widely different from 
that held when mission work began there in 1819. 

5. The Moslems of Turkey have 'taken careful note of the fact 
that out of Christianity there grows a better society. They have 
observed the Christian home that springs up wherever girls are 
educated. They recognize the fact that every Christian com- 
munity supports schools for the education of its boys and girls; 



MOSLEMS IX TURKEY. 295 

that industries are fostered, and sobriety enforced, and honesty 
and truthfulness demanded. They have observed that the 
Christian community is more aggressive and more prosperous than 
others, and they attribute this great change to their rehgion. 
The Christian hospital and the orphan asylums, scattered far and 
wide in the land, are teaching Turks a daily lesson of Him who 
came and lived on earth a servant of others, a healer of human ills, 
and a benefactor of mankind. After two generations of observa- 
tion and experiences, in spite of prejudice and hatred and bigotry, 
the lesson has been better learned than many of us are aware. 

6. Undoubtedly the Mohammedans expect the missionaries to 
press upon them the superior claims of Jesus Christ. Great 
numbers of them have read the New Testament and the life and 
teachings of Paul. They know that Christianity demands of its 
followers that they preach Him to all men. They know that, in so 
far as Christians in Turkey have failed hitherto to do this, they 
have failed in their devotion to Him whom they profess to serve as 
master. They would respect the purpose of Christians to exalt 
the Christ before the Mohammedans of that country, even though 
they might oppose the effort. Only thus can the respect lost by 
the failures of the past be regained in the future. 

Ways of Advancing. 

In view of these facts has not the time come for us as a mission 
board to make a decided advance : 

1. By sending more missionaries into Turkey, not to devote 
their time and energies to the nominal Christian races, but to give 
themselves to the twelve million Moslems that dwell in all parts 
of the empire, for whose evangelization little or no direct effort 
is now made. 

2. By designating missionaries to work directly among the 
Kurds, who are a strong, sturdy, able race, occupjdng the moun- 
tain regions along the upper waters of the Tigris and Euphrates 
rivers. These probably number, including all the different tribes, 
not less than three million souls, and for them, at the present time, 
no missionaries are exclusively at work. 

3. By sending missionaries to the Albanians in Western Meso- 
potamia, who are Moslems by name, but who are already pleading 
for missionaries to reside among them. A slight work has been 
begun in their country and, so far as we can see, the race is ready 
to listen to Christian instruction and to give the Christian mission- 



296 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

ary a welcome. Within the last year an Albanian prince has 
pleaded with us in person to open work among that most ancient 
and yet most savage race in all Europe. We are assured of a 
welcome among that people, numbering some two million souls. 

4. By developing the medical work to reach more fully all 
Moslem races, and so demonstrate to them the brotherhood and 
sympathy of Christianity as it reveals itself in practical life. The 
medical missionary will receive a welcome into every Moham- 
medan tribe, race, or community, and his work will meet always 
and everywhere a quick and hearty response. Turkey could 
almost be won today by the Christian physician. 

5. By planning to assist the Turks in organizing and conducting 
schools of all classes and grades. The time is approaching when 
they will be asking for this help even more loudly than they do 
today. We should have in the country forces sufficient to enable 
us to join hands with them in putting their educational system 
upon a modern, permanent basis. 

6. By preparing and issuing a new, not controversial but con- 
structive, literature in large quantities and of great variety, in 
the language of the Mohammedans. This literature should not 
consist of mere translations, but must be produced by able men 
who know both the mind and belief of the Moslem, as well as the 
essentials of Christianity. 

7. By so organizing our forces that we can present to every 
Moslem in Turkey such a vision of the Christ that he will see the 
beauty of his life and character and be led to exclaim, " My Lord 
and my God! " 



India's millions for christ. 297 



INDIA'S MILLIONS FOR CHRIST. 
Rev. Henry G. Bissell, of Ahmednagar, India. 

We are on the second half of the first decade of the twentieth 
century. You cannot name another five years in the history of 
this country in which its citizens have done more for the world's 
welfare. 

The testimony of all who traverse the other countries, with 
eyes to see, is that everywhere through the Eastern world there are 
substantial signs of the good which Americans are doing, through 
men and money given in the battle against sin, as years ago the 
same gifts were offered to other battles nearer home. 

Think of the various projects in the Orient, helped on and 
pushed through by leaders sent from these states, which will 
have an age-long effect for good upon many millions of people. 
America has extended this hand of help in no patronizing, proud 
way, thinking of her superiority, but rather in the simple and 
humble spirit of doing a service to fellow-men in need, and working 
well the task given her in the world's progress. 

If God has done for America what he has not done for any other 
country, then surely America should do for God what no other 
country has done for him. And yet there is little room for self- 
congratulation. The story goes, in India, that there w^as once a 
Buddhist dreamer. It happened on a day that in his wanderings 
he came to the foot of Mount Everest, that sentinel for centuries 
keeping watch over the whole Himalayan range, and the great 
plains which stretch away for miles to the south. The pigmy 
priest, unawed, stood beside this giant child of mother earth; then 
he stretched forth his arms and said, ^' I will embrace you," and 
bringing his arms together he found he had caught but a small 
shrub; the mountain was untouched. I think we are a little 
ahead of that priest, but there's still untold work for the church 
to do before the travail of the Master's soul shall cease, and he 
shall see the world redeemed. 

Social Lite of India. 

Take, if you will, the one empire of India. Its Mohammedan 
population outnumbers the Mohammedans in all the world besides. 
There are living there together, within two thirds of the area of the 



298 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

United States, more separate races than you can count on the 
continent of Europe. It is a land of many marvels and mysteries, 
of colors, creeds, and customs, perhaps of some failures and false- 
hoods, yet it is a great country, potent with possibilities. Its 
natural resources are such that with a little coaxing the soil has 
supplied for centuries the material needs of the millions of human- 
ity crowding its plains and huddling about its hills. The pursuits 
of agriculture, of weaving the coarser cloths for local markets; the 
hand manufactures of all kinds of metal ware; the numberless 
trades and crafts seen in Oriental lands; the special wood and 
brass work; the temple architecture; the palaces of the princes; the 
characteristic dress of the numerous castes and the various nation- 
alities; the mysterious, meditative, enchanting, and romantic life 
of the Hindus, — all together suggest occupations and thoughts, 
although they are primitive in point of progress, and an interesting 
life, although it may often impress one as listlessly lived, com- 
pared to the bang and the whirl of the Western world. One of 
the very points of strength in that empire is the diversity of 
people, now brought together practically under one government, 
and being put into mutual communication by the use of the one 
English language, which is prying its way among the dialects of 
India. 

It is sad to see society split up into small caste circles. A rigid, 
frigid system it is, which compels the son always to follow the 
father's trade, and weds the daughter always to a son of the same 
caste. I really believe the average Hindu had rather neglect the 
worship of his gods than break caste by certain easy associations 
with a lower caste man. How did all this originate? Who 
knows? The priest, the tillers of the soil, the tradesmen, the 
craftsmen, the soldiers, the servants, finally, became fixed in their 
occupations, till the observance of these distinctions became a 
religious duty, unyielding, intolerable. No one in India can say 
how many different castes there are. If there is weakness in dis- 
union, a diversity of elements when finally united makes a bond 
all the stronger, and such does the diversity of human life in that 
land promise some day to be. Wait till India becomes a nation. 

In all the greatness that we Westerners have obtained in material 
things, and things unseen let us not forget that language, htera- 
ture, the arts, the laws, the industries and rehgions of the world 
started among the Eastern races ; that out of the soil of the Orient 
in the fullness of time burst, budded, and blossomed the plant, 



India's millions for Christ. 299 

the tree, we call Christianity, now in its turn sheltering and 
nourishing the good and Godlike things it sees everywhere. 
This is the life and these are the millions we want to claim as a 
tribute to the Master of men. 

Religious Life of India. 

Look at their religious life. India is a living parliament of 
religions. The six ancient faiths of the Eastern world are accu- 
mulated there. In the stored-up rehgious thoughts of the Hindus 
is enough lore to last the student of literature, mythology, philo- 
sophy, and religion his life many times over. The tendencies and 
intentions of modern research among our scholars are an acknowl- 
edgment that some great thinking has been done among these 
people. Among them, good people have lived their lives and left 
the fruits thereof. Among them, great teachers have taught, 
with whole races and continents as pupils. Some of these lives 
and thoughts have later become the nucleus of a whole system of 
rehgion, which stands to this day, almost resistless before the 
advance of the best that the twentieth century Christian world has 
to offer. 

The people of India have, in a very marked degree, the principle 
of religious aspiration. They are trying in a thousand ways to 
satisfy their hunger and thirst after God, nor do all of them die 
altogether unsatisfied. All the world's religious books were 
^vritten under Eastern skies. The Hebrew scriptures are aglow 
with the gold of the East, rich, sweet, and simple, but Christianity 
has no corner on God's Spirit. There are many heathen things 
done in Christian countries, and many Christian things done in 
heathen countries. It is always through the promptings of the 
Spirit of God that religious force accumulates and then finds 
expression in religious activities. All rehgious instinct and aspi- 
ration and activity are man's, through no evil spirit's favor, but 
are the things in him which make him most like his Maker. 

In India, religion is on the ground before the child is born, and 
still lingers after the body of the aged is burned or buried, in 
ancestral worship or feasts. The people of India, of whatever 
creed, are always ready to talk with you on rehgious subjects. 
All conceivable relations into which a man might enter are closely 
allied with some religious rites. Building a house, digging a 
well, preparing for marriage, casting up accounts, beginning his 
spring plowing, sowing his seed, gathering the harvest, and all 



300 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

that you can conceive of his doing, he does with some rehgious 
ceremony. I knew a well-to-do Parsee merchant in our town, for 
years the faithful vice-president of the city municipahty, who 
used to spend the first two or three hours of each morning in 
prayer and meditation, while not infrequently many impatient 
customers, among them some of us missionaries, were waiting in 
his store. A Mohammedan, in business in a crowded thorough- 
fare of the same city, told me more than once that the one aim he 
had in view was to accumulate enough wealth to enable him 
finally to visit Mecca once and satisfy his soul. He left for Mecca 
a few months before I came to America, in March, 1905. In the 
early morning in the same city one may see large numbers of 
Brahmans in full morniflg dress, not unlike the Western evening 
dress minus the entangling trains, repairing to any of the numerous 
temples for morning worship, while lines of their ladies, at certain 
times of the year, walk daily some miles to the special shrines of 
their chosen deities. Their zeal in expressing their devotion to 
their gods goes to an extreme of self-abnegation and self-denial 
unheard of among the most zealous of Western Christians. What 
rich soil is all this religious life in which to sow the seed of the 
kingdom of God! 

Among the one third of the human race who are the followers of 
Buddha, may be counted India's contributions. That prophet 
had a great soul. Like Christ, he thought out the problems of 
life in the mountains alone; like him, he left no writings in prose 
or poetry. He lived, he thought, he died. The system which 
bears his name is not all contradictions and falsehoods, but it 
does lack the dynamic force of an ever-present and all-powerful 
personality. Moral codes, good principles, philosophic abstractions, 
do not save a man from his daily temptations and habits. The 
most effective force at work in the universe is intelligence or 
personality. Put this, '' I am with you always," into the codes 
and principles of Buddhism and see the results. 

Mohammedanism. 

We have heard of Mohammedanism. It is a force upon which 
India and many lands besides have had to count for centuries. 
Its adherents are distributed in Europe, Asia, and Africa. Mo- 
hammed fought against idolatry. He taught submission to the 
one personal God; he acknowledged Jesus as the Messiah, though 
not as divine. The Koran he beheved to be the last stage of 



India's millions for Christ. 301 

God's revelations to man. He has ninety-nine names for God. 
Shall we go to his followers with the one hundredth and crowning 
one of Father? Woman is man's slave. Crime or immorality 
will not excommunicate a Mohammedan. Church and state are 
one. Sensuality and lust run in the Tartar blood. Its fatalism is 
fatal to its own healthy development. Bring into this system 
the purity, the truth, the service, the love of the Christian faith, 
imbue it with the spirit of self-sacrifice, and you have strong 
devotion and loyalty and zeal, which have made Mohammedan 
converts in India endure persecution, fight the good fight, and pay 
any price to keep the new found faith in the Saviour, Jesus. 

The followers of Zoroaster, the Parsees from Persia, have been 
in India for five hundred years. Zoroaster was one of the great 
teachers of the East. An echo of his own moral struggles is heard 
in his teachings of dualism. The Parsee adores the sun, the 
source of so much blessing, giving life and light and having such 
cleansing power, being, too, the largest body symbolic of the 
source of all such power. The Parsees are devout. They do not 
proselyte. Their temples are exclusive. Sins of lust and passion 
are regrettably noticeable among them. Charities abound, but 
are prompted by mixed motives. This religion can never recover 
its former power. It suffered the first blow in the seventh cen- 
tury when the Mohammedans invaded Persia. This system, too, 
is giving away under the calm conquest of Christianity. 

Hinduism. 

Then there is Hinduism, ancient and modern, the strongest, 
the oldest, religion in India. There is a certain prestige about old 
age. Hinduism has gained no small share of its power by its 
openness, in a way, towards other faiths. Probably for this 
reason, a small score of Hindus could not be found in all Hindustan 
who could define Hinduism. This ancient, elaborate philosophy 
is professed by one hundred and ninety millions. Nature wor- 
ship is its backbone, mystery its watchword. All unusual' pheno- 
mena are connected with deity. The Vedas are selections made 
from the ancient scriptures, and are not the daily thought of those 
former pastoral people. Hinduism, ancient and modern, is a 
colossal conglomerate mass of philosophies and systems hope- 
lessly interborrowed. What of truth there is in it is from God. 
Its founder and its wi'itings have gripped the people as few other 
religious systems have ever done. It is our privilege to send the 



302 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

larger life, the greater truth, the fuller knowledge of God the 
Father, and of Jesus, in daily spiritual presence, as the helping 
Brother of man to these millions in India. 

The religious instinct, the devotion, and abundant religious 
activities are already the Orient people's possession. Add to 
these the power of truth, righteousness, and love, personified in 
the God-man, and the church of the East will be the greatest 
church we know. I will go further than that, and say that God's 
complete orb of truth is so great, so much greater than any of us 
think, that we of Christendom will never know it all, till men 
everywhere, made in God's image and feeling after him, have 
experienced the Father's saving presence in Jesus the Saviour, 
and have brought in their contributions to the interpretation and 
the understanding of it all. We are people of one world. None 
of us liveth unto himself, and no one part of the human family 
can do the thinking for the rest. 

From the multitudes and varieties of peoples, the religious 
atmosphere, the contributions of many good thinkers, the mis- 
takes and successes of the Western church, the ripest results of 
our best scholarship in science, in speculation, and rehgion brought 
within reach, India's millions will one day rise to the position of 
a great church power and take her full share in the work of the 
world's redemption. The Father in heaven is interested in bring- 
ing back to his home the last lost prodigal, wherever he may be. 
The diamond, trampled in the mire under the swine's feet, still has, 
in the hands of the speciahst, the qualities of the brilliant, lustrous, 
genuine gem. No soul from the Creator's hand has gone forth to 
any existence that has not still following it the Father's active 
interest to help it into higher realms of closer companionship with 
himself. .Is the gospel winning its way into the hearts of the 
Hindus? Who said, '' I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto 
me " ? Then be assured that the truth is conquering and the 
kingdom of Christ is coming to the realms of India's princes. 

Controlling Ideas. 

The modern messenger of the Church of Christ goes to the non- 
Christian peoples with these three ideas controlling him and his 
methods of work. In the first place, he goes conscious of the fact 
that centuries before the first preacher ever landed among them 
from the West, God was busy with those people, revealing himself 
to them according to their capacity to receive. The preacher, 



India's millions for christ. 303 

therefore, goes in the spirit of Jesus, desiring and working, not to 
destroy the law and the prophets, which aheady exist among them, 
the ideals they may already have, but trying to fill in where they 
need more light and more effectual help from sin. The iconoclast 
who says, '^ Away with all this you have here, it is all falsehood 
and superstition and empty liturgies, dishonoring God and a 
curse to men, I have what you want, this is the truth. Take 
this," will find as little response in India, as he will anywhere in 
God's world. Woe to him who will destroy another man's ideal. 
Let him the rather build upon the good to be found and bring it 
to the best development, with the larger help offered through the 
daily companionship of the Man of Galilee. 

In the second place, the missionary is coming to interpret in a 
larger way the words of Jesus: " Go ye into all the world, and 
preach the gospel to the whole creation." He believes that 
means more than geographical extension; it means go with the 
gospel and permeate all departments of men's lives. There 
is no secular and religious distinction to the Christian; he does 
all things for the love of God and for the love of man. Man must 
be lifted symmetrically. His economic condition; the indigenous 
pursuits of his country; any special natural resources in his land; 
his social life, in the home and among outer circles; his educa- 
tional needs; proper sanitary needs for his dwellings and town; 
effective medical care for his body, and his religious needs, — all 
sides of the man's life need the gospel's help. Giving him the 
right kind of help along all these lines is giving the whole gospel 
to help the whole man. This your missionaries are trying to do 
just as fast as you back them up with something to invest in such 
enterprises. You know it costs to redeem from destruction. It 
costs some people only their dollars, but it is costing others their 
lives. I say it humbly, I believe they are giving their lives for 
the cause more freely than many of us are giving of our dollars. 

In the third place, the missionary goes desiring most to take to 
the non-Christian people the essential message of Christianity. 
Not in the boastful spirit, which bom'bards the heathen in his 
blindness with a storm like this: " Here, away with all this, I 
have what you need. Take the Lord Jesus in your heart, and put 
all this elaborate church paraphernalia, which we have prepared 
in the West under certain peculiar needs and conditions, and put 
them on your back, brother, and God bless you." Why, friends, 
the thoughts and deeds of the Orientalist are all alive with religion. 



304 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

Let's give him the Christian's best help, crystaUized in the daily 
presence of Christ. Let's say to him, " My brother man, you and 
I can walk in daily touch with God every day; Jesus teaches us 
how to do it; he knows what he'lp man needs. By his daily com- 
panionship he can help men to know God better and to walk 
nearer to him. Shall I tell you about Jesus? " What else besides 
this do you wish the Orientahst to take from the message Chris- 
tianity has for the world? Multiplied organization does not run 
in the Hindu's life. India is not yet a nation. But the people 
possess a genius for religion. They have their own countless ways 
of expressing their inner faith, imperfect, distorted often, to be 
sure, but I believe the Hindus need far less than we think the 
externalities of Western Christianity. 

The world's greatest religious teachers, the founders of the 
faiths which have stood and withstood for centuries, were all 
from the Eastern world. Surcharge this religious atmosphere 
with the hitherto unknown companionship with God through 
Jesus, and the East will live and move. It will live for God and 
move with service for men. Heaven save the Orient from the 
havoc of isms. Heaven hold the world's people together, with 
the bonds of devotion to the one Master. 

Humbly, prayerfully working on, with these three principles to 
guide his policy, has the gospel accomplished anything through 
the missionary in that land of woes and wonders? Avoiding 
general statistics, may I selfishly cite some concrete results of the 
power of the gospel in individual lives, and in the transformation 
of communities, and in producing some results which are even 
national in their reach? 

Field of the Marathi Mission. 

The city of Sholapur is one of the eight principal centers in the 
Marathi Mission. Its ancient fort suggests history and romance. 
Its artificial bathing tank, and its predominating Brahman popu- 
lation suggest a stronghold of Hinduism. Like a little child, which 
Christ once set in the midst to teach his truths, there stands 
in the very heart of that city a modest little church. Crowded at 
its services, paying its own expenses, the church is led in its work 
by a native pastor of rare enthusiasm and consecration. He is 
easily one of the leading preachers and organizers among all the 
honored pastors in the mission. His father belonged to the 
classes who, like his Saviour, are the despised and rejected of men, 



India's millions for christ. 305 

acquainted with sorrows and enduring abuse. Jesus came into 
that life, and see the work the son is doing for the lost in the land. 

Outside of the city walls of Sholapur, literally without the camp, 
is a church of leper converts. These helpless ones of God's chil- 
dren, some of them with bodies being slowly dismembered by the 
fatal malady which eats away flesh and bone, are gathered there 
into a comfortable home, cared for, preached to, and beloved by 
a high-caste man, now a Christian, who once scoffed at Chris- 
tianity, w^ho later suffered all manner of persecution w^hen he 
confessed Christianity, and who is now showing his devotion to 
the cause in this service for these neglected incurables. It is 
Jesus, in Sholapur, who has touched these lepers and made them 
whole and hearty Christians. Their leader is an able physician, 
too. To his other good works he has added a large home for 
orphans. No one can compute the good which Dr. Keskar of 
that city is doing. Financially, he is not connected with any 
mission board. 

The traveling Christian Endeavor secretary for Western India 
is a young man of ability as a student and speaker, and is thor- 
oughly imbued with the Endeavor spirit. A promising pastorate 
was sacrificed for his present work. His father was a convert 
from the lower castes. The son was first an enthusiastic teacher 
in the mission high school at Ahmednagar, where very few of the 
numerous high-caste pupils or associate teachers ever thought of 
his father's origin, or questioned his admittance to their friendship. 
Later, he was ordained pastor over one of the principal churches 
in the mission, and finally was chosen a leader at large among the 
Christian youths of all that section of Western India. 

In Ahmednagar, there lives a modest, hard-working, Christian 
lawyer. * His father was a persecuted high-caste convert. En- 
dow^ed with some natural gifts as scholar and thinker, the 3^oung 
convert reached the useful place of pastor of the largest church in 
the mission in the same city. He taught in the theological semi- 
nary. For a while he superintended whole mission districts. One 
son entered the legal profession. His home is the friendly gather- 
ing place for all kinds of citizens. The educated and high caste 
come for fraternal calls and conversation, and the low castes and 
no castes come for counsel and friendship. He preaches regularly 
and without pay in the second church in the city, known as the 
" Church of the Lamb." He preaches on the streets. He con- 
ducts attractive native concerts, and is invited by churches and 



306 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

associations everywhere, for one of his spicy and spiritually helpful 
addresses. For years this lawyer has been the lay moderator of 
the large body of the '' Union of Churches " in our mission. At 
the World's Parliament of Religions, in Chicago, in 1893, Dr. 
Barrows corresponded with this Mr. Modak about representing 
Indian Christianity at that gathering, but he felt he had work of 
greater importance nearer home. In his practice it is his rule 
never to plead the case of a Christian against a Christian. 

In the same city a wealthy Parsee became a Christian. It cost 
him all his friends and possessions to take the stand. The day 
after his baptism some of the Parsee community offered him 
twenty-five thousand dollars if he would recant. After prepar- 
ing himself, he took priestly orders in the Church of England. 
Today you will find this sturdy veteran, with his long term of 
untiring service behind him, during which his wife died, retired 
to a small hill town, hving with his three daughters, who are active 
in any good cause and devoted to their father. Every day the 
old man walks down to the market square below his house and 
talks with httle groups of shopkeepers or venders of fruit, fodder, 
and fuel, who welcome the friendly face among them, and listen 
to the ripe experiences of the Christian saint and of Christ his 
Saviour. 

A Mohammedan was baptized in the same city, and later became 
a powerful evangelist. He translated portions of the Koran. He 
assisted a missionary in the compilation of an elementary astron- 
omy and anatomy and a Bible dictionary. He was preparing a 
commentary on the Psalms when his body, worn out in the 
Master's service, was laid away to rest. His spirit serves and 
praises God now in labors more abundant in the spiritual realms. 
Perhaps he still works for India. 

I did not mention the wives of these men. It is a greater work 
of grace that they all were fitted to occupy the places they did. 
They stood beside their husbands, made their homes the centers 
of the parish, visited among the families in their towns, were 
active in all forms of Christian work among the young and old, 
and helped to bring in many sheaves into the Master's garner. 

Attitude of the Natives of India. 

Count them, over a million Protestant Christians in India, prince 
and plowman, contractor and coolie, scholar and soldier, poet 
and pupil, leavening the whole lump. Six and ten per cent of some 



India's millions for christ. 307 

villages in India are given in government censuses as Christian. 
Whole classes and masses of the people are sending in petitions 'to 
the government and the missionary bodies for more instruction. 
They ask for more opportunities for their children, whom they 
would like to see growing up as useful citizens and thrifty house- 
holders. Last year four hundred and seventy-nine persons united 
with the church in our mission alone, a good-sized community of 
itself. The problems connected with these growing communities 
are simply overwhelming the mission. Should their children be 
educated, should we teach them some trade? Most of them are 
either ostracized or barred from trades by the prejudice of friends 
and foes alike. Shall they receive any religious instruction to 
make them stable and useful Christians, or, being baptized, shall 
they be abandoned? We feel like soldiers sent to fight your 
battles and told to supply our own ammunition after we have 
faced the enemy. Some of these representatives are simply 
dropping where they stand; the pressure abroad and the neglect 
here at home are too great. I wish to quote from letters received 
lately from the Marathi Mission: 

'' The thirteenth annual conference of foreign mission boards, 
in which your and our representatives had a part, lately passed 
and published the following resolution: ' In order to arouse the 
churches to a sense of their privilege and responsibility, and in 
order to meet but inadequately the present needs in the mission 
fields under boards represented at this conference, there ought 
to be at least one thousand volunteers ready to be sent out each 
year until these fields are occupied in force. We appeal to the 
students present in this quadrennial Student Volunteer Con- 
vention that they, by asking to be sent to these needy waiting 
fields, a thousand strong each year, challenge the churches, where 
final responsibility must rest, to provide the necessary funds.' '' 
The Marathi Mission voices its need, its most imperative need, as 
follows: " As to our urgent need of missionaries, we would repeat 
the appeals which have been made in our resolutions of former 
years, and in the mission letter of May, 1905. Again, to particu- 
larize a few of our most urgent immediate needs, we would specify 
for Bombay a kindergartner and an additional missionary family; 
for Sirur an ordained missionary family; for Satara an additional 
family and one or two ladies; for Wai a married medical mission- 
ary; for Rahuri an additional family; for Ahmednagar an expert 
in modern pedagogy — ordained if possible — to be at the head 



308 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

of a reorganized normal school for training teachers of both sexes, 
and two ladies (trained) qualified for positions in the large girls' 
school and the Bible women's training school. This is the mini- 
mum which we can indicate for partially meeting our present 
urgent needs. For such a speedy reenforcement we make a most 
earnest appeal." 

We would like to reecho that appeal to the Congregational 
churches of America, and to the young Christians of those churches. 
Every member of this mission is overAvorked. When the Student 
Volunteer Movement is inspiring many thousands of the finest 
young men and women to devote themselves to foreign missionary 
service, and when God is committing great wealth to the Congre- 
gational churches, should not these churches deem the Marathi 
Mission remiss in duty if we did not appeal for an early reenforce- 
ment of at least ten additional workers to this fruitful and over- 
worked mission? Most earnestly we request you to give and to 
support this appeal to the Congregational churches and young 
people of America. 

To this centennial meeting of the Board are sent the following 
special messages from the Marathi Mission, prepared about a month 
ago at my request. I will read them from the original documents 
signed by the senders. The missionaries say, " We can and we 
will, if you will what you can, to make India Christ's," and the 
signatures follow. The Christian people from all that region 
send this message in their own tongue, attaching this translation: 
" Because they willed what they could, we are today Christ's men. 
By God's help we will what we can to make our Hindu land 
Christ's land." 

Our Opportunity and Duty. 

Friends of the Board, shall we at this end stand by these our 
representatives and these our brethren in Christ across the seas? 
Samuel Mills uttered his words in America, not in India, but I 
verily believe the spirit of the utterance is manifest more in the 
working force on the foreign field at the end of the century than 
it is here at home. 

There are many results the gospel has wrought which are 
national in their influence in India. The Christian Sunday is 
surely finding a place in the life of India. The days observed by 
the Church, such as Christmas, Easter, etc., are attracting atten- 
tion. Movements like the Somaj are started and maintained by 



India's millions for christ. 309 

essentially the Christian spirit. National gatherings of all kinds, 
and all attempts to nurture the patriotic spirit, are through the 
influences of Christian education. The desire to travel abroad; 
to pursue studies in Western lands; the visits of leading men to 
our countries, merchants and kings and students coming to 
America to study the economic, the social, and educational condi- 
tions and institutions; the movement among the Christians to 
unite for more effectual work; the Swadeshi movement over larger 
parts of India, calling attention to things Indian and pressing upon 
all the claims of the country itself; and, finally, the actual organi- 
zation of a national Indian Christian association as a home mis- 
sionary organization — all these are fruits borne by Christianity. 
The problem of India's millions being won to God's kingdom 
is not a foreign problem. America is the battle ground of foreign 
missions. There are thousands of men and millions of money in 
this country which should be available to put into this world- 
project. If the world is to be made better we must work on it 
more evenly at all points of the compass. We of the West can- 
not rise much higher unless we take the rest of the world with us. 
The world's needs, our unparalleled prosperity, our duty as 
stewards of God's gifts, the privilege of saving our fellow-men, the 
call and command of Christ to go forth, the achievements of the 
church, alread}^ a part of history, and the sure promise in all 
things, seen and unseen, that truth, righteousness, love, God, will 
win the world, are all together urging us to help to hasten the 
glad day, — to live, to give, like Christ, for the whole world. 



A Message 

To the American Board, at its meeting celebrating the Haystack 
Centennial, from their missionaries of its oldest mission, the 
Marathi Mission in India: 

^' We can and we will, if you will what you can to make India 
Christ's." 

Robert A. Hume. H. J. Bruce. 

Katie F. Hume. H. P. Bruce. 

James Smith. Louise H. R. Grie^^. 

Maud Smith. Theodore Storrs Lee. 

Emily R. Bissell. Hannah Hume Lee. 

Belle Nugent. Minnie Chester Sibley. 

Lester H. Beals. Jean P. Gordon. 

Rose F. Beals. L. S. Gates. 



310 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

D. C. Churchill. Frances Hazen Gates. 

Alice H. Churchill. William Hazen. 

Ruth P. Hume, Florence Hartt Hazen. 

Edith Gates. Emily W. Harding. 

Eleanor Stephenson. Mary C. Winsor. 

W. 0. Ballantine. Mary E. Moulton. 

Josephine L. Ballantine. Madoline Campbell. 

Edward Fairbank. Camilla Clarke Abbott. 

Mary C. Fairbank. J. E. Abbott. 

Alden H. Clark. Nellie P. Peacock. 

Mary W. Clark. Anna L. Millard. 

B. K. Hunsberger. 

A Message 

To the American Board from Indian Christians of the Marathi 
Mission: 

" Because they [i. e., Mills and his associates] willed what they 
could, we are Christ's men. By God's help we will what we can 
to make our Hindu-land Christ's land." 

Ahmednagar, August 30, 1906. 

S. R. MoDAK. B. N. Adhav. 

S. S. Salve. S. P. Gaikwad. 

N. V. TiLOK. J. S. Rahatoe. 

B. B. Chakranarayan. S. V. Karmarker. 

B. P. Umap. T. Buell. 

B. C. Ujgare. p. S. Kukde. 

V. L. Bhaubal. Vitholrow Makasare. 

Wai, September 5, 1906. 
Kaliyan Hariba Gaikwa. Dhanaji Sonaji Chandkar. 

Sowliaram Arguna Bhalekar. Shankar Balwant Kulkarin. 

Baporji Narayan Dete. Tatyubu Shivaram Bhosle. 

Vittoo Sakhoraniji Ohol. Prabhakar Balaji Keskar. 

Nana Ganoba Gaikwad. 

SiRUR (Poona), September 8, 1906. 
Sadoba Makaji Jadhar. M. K. Amolik. 

Bombay. 
Vinayak Kashinath Koshe. 



CLOSING SERVICE, 

Friday Morning, October 1 2. 



President Mark Hopkins wrote of the five men of the hay- 
stack: '' They had enlarged views of the capabiUties of the gospel, 
of its moral adaptations as a universal remedy for the woes and 
guilt of man." 

''Go ye therefore, and teach all nations. . . . and, lo, I am 
with you alway, even unto the end of the world." 



BAPTISM FOR SERVICE. 

Saviour, who thy Hfe didst give, 

That our souls might ransomed be. 
Rest we not till all the world 

Hears that love, and turns to thee. 

Help us that we falter not, 

Though the fields are white and wide, 

And the reapers, sorely pressed, 
Call for aid on every side. 

Guide us, that with swifter feet 

We may speed us on our way. 
Leading darkened nations forth 

Into thine eternal day. 

Sweet the service, blest the toil; 

Thine alone the glory be; 
Oh, baptize our souls anew; 

Consecrate us all to thee, 

— Amelia D. Lockwood. 

[Taken from the "Pilgrim Hymnal" by permission of the Congregational Sunday 
School and Publishing Society.] 



THE CLOSING SERVICE. 313 



THE CLOSING SERVICE, HELD IN NORTH ADAMS 
METHODIST CHURCH, OCTOBER 12, 1906. 

The final session opened with a devotional service, which 
was led by Rev. Frank N. White, of Chicago. President Capen 
took the chair at 9.30. After the singing of a hymn, the busi- 
ness committee reported the following draft of a letter to Hon. 
Elihu Root, Secretary of State: 

''Concerning the barbarities and slavery inflicted upon African natives by 
the Independent State of the Congo, it is currently reported that the British 
Foreign Secretary stated in the House of Commons on July 5, last, that if 
other powers would join Great Britain in insisting upon reforms in that state, 
the government would welcome them. In view of this statement, the Ameri- 
can Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, celebrating its Haystack 
Centennial at North Adams and Williamstown, Mass., October 9 to 12 inst., 
expresses its earnest desire that this suggestion from England be met, and 
that the United States, through its representatives at the next International 
Peace Convention at The Hague, maj^, so far as is consistent, exert its moral 
influence toward the prompt and effective correction of existing abuses, and 
the abolition of these abundant and seemingly well-attested atrocities." 

This was approved and ordered sent to Secretary Root. The 
Board passed the following resolutions: 

" Resolved, That a committee be appointed to consider and report at the next 
annual meeting of the Board upon the wisdom and feasibility of the erection 
at Williamstown, Mass., of an appropriate memorial commemorative of this 
centennial meeting, together with approximate expense of such memorial and 
suggestions as to methods of providing for the same." 

The president appointed as committee: President Henry 
Hopkins, President W. J. Tucker, A. W. Benedict, Frank A. Day, 
O. H. Ingram, Rev. E. M. Williams, Rev. S. Parkes Cadman. 

" Resolved, That the Board would put on record its appreciation of the many 
years of devoted service rendered by the Rev. Judson Smith, D.D., as Corre- 
sponding Foreign Secretary, and its profound sense of loss in his death." 

After the resolution in memory of Secretary Smith, Rev. 
Edward D. Eaton, D.D., formerly president of Beloit College, and 
now pastor of the North Church, St. Johnsbury, Vt., made a brief 
memorial address which is included in this volume. 

After that, addresses were made by the following missionaries: 
Rev. F. B. Bridgman, of the South African Mission; Dr. H. N. 



314 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

Kinnear, of Foochow; Rev. E. G. Tewksbury, of North China; 
Rev. Stephen vR. Trowbridge, under appointment for Central 
Turkey; Mrs. Trowbridge; Rev. John S. Chandler, of Madura; 
Dr. Edwin St. John Ward, under commission for Eastern Turkey; 
Miss Charlotte Allen, also under commission to the same mission; 
Rev. Robert E. Hume and Miss Laura A. Caswell now under 
commission for the Marathi Mission; Rev. A. W. Staub, under 
commission of the Board, not designated; Rev. Mr. Marcusson, 
of Chicago, formerly commissioned by the Board, now conducting 
a mission for Jews in Chicago. 

Five of these addresses (all that were obtainable) are included 
in this volume, with one by the Rev. James H. Roberts, prepared 
for this occasion, but not delivered, on account of lack of time. 

The Business Committee then reported, through Rev. Edward 
L. Smith, resolutions of gratitude, which were adopted, to those 
whose cooperation had made the meetings so successful, and 
also addressed, in the following paragraphs, to the agents and 
constituency of the Board. 

''The thanks of the Board are extended to its missionaries and officials, to 
pastors and laymen, who have given special and tireless effort in the raising 
of the million-dollar fimd, and to the great body of givers, small and large, 
who have made that million dollars possible. To Rev. Arthur H. Smith, D.D., 
who left his exacting and important labors in China to participate in this 
campaign, and to Mrs. Smith, the loving sympathy of the Board is extended 
in the sad loss of their son and only child. 

" With great satisfaction the Board would call the attention of the churches 
to the action of the Prudential Committee in arranging for the visitation of 
the fields during the coming year by its chairman, the Foreign Corresponding 
Secretary, two of the Field Secretaries, and certain other corporate members, 
to the end that those who carry on the business of the Board at home may- 
have all possible first-hand information regarding the condition, needs, and 
prospects of its work abroad. 

''The Board would urge upon the Congregational churches of the country, 
whose servant it is, that the completion of the million-dollar fund be regarded 
as in no way warranting a relaxing of effort, but rather as removing an obstacle 
to a far more triumphant advance. Profoundly grateful to God for the answer 
to the prayers of the Haystack Meeting and the prayers of all good friends of 
missions, which answer we see in part in the ninety-seven years of life and 
work of this Board, we appeal to the churches that they will never do less for 
the cause than they have done during the past year, that they will each one 
make some offering to the Board's work, and so become coworkers with 
Jesus Christ in the conquest of the world. May the motto be ours for the 
coming year in the form suggested by one of our devoted missionaries, 'We 
can — we will.' " 



THE CLOSING SERVICE. 315 

Remarks were made b}^ Mr. Clinton Q. Richmond, of North 
Adams, chairman of the Committee of Entertainment, and by- 
Rev. W. E. Thompson, of North Adams, pastor of the Methodist 
Episcopal Chm'ch, in which the Boaid met. 

Rev. Theodore E. Busfield made a response in behalf of the 
Congregational churches of North Adams and Williamstown to 
the resolution of thanks. 

President Capen made a response in behalf of the Board, express- 
ing gratitude to the people of North Adams and Williamstown for 
their hospitality. 

Rev. E. E. Strong led in prayer and pronounced the benediction, 
and the Board adjourned without da}^, thus bringing to a close 
one of the most successful meetings it has ever held. 



316 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 



ADDRESS IN MEMORY OF REV. JUDSON SMITH, D.D. 
Rev. Edward D. Eaton, D.D. 

Among memory's pictures of Dr. Judson Smith, one which is 
invested for me with special interest is connected with a scene 
during our journey of a week on the Grand Canal of North China. 
After the days spent in the house-boat it was refreshing to leave 
it for an hour or two at evening and walk through the fields and 
villages, while around the great curves of the river, in which the 
canal is merged for part of its course, our boats swung, propelled 
by high, narrow sails, or, if the wind failed, dragged by coolie 
'' trackers " toiling along the bank. 

It was Easter week, and spring was astir. The level rays of 
the westering sun shone across the fertile plain, touching the 
blossoms of the apricot trees and the greening fields. With elastic 
step Dr. Smith moved through the unwonted scene, his eye 
kindling as we talked together, his mind ranging now through 
the spiritual destitutions so painfully manifest around us, now 
through boundless hopes which his faith sketched for the future 
of that empire, which extended on all sides of us like an illimitable 
ocean. 

If Dr. Smith felt himself always an ambassador for Christ, and 
thrilled with a sense of the august responsibilities of the great 
missionary organization in which he was given leadership, that 
feeling was intensified in a land where the missionary cause has 
been so devotedly and successfully advanced. His face shone 
when he addressed native audiences. In conference with workers 
on the field his affection for these heroic brothers and sisters was 
evident, and the quickness and depth of his sympathy with their 
problems. " Remember, I am your secretary," he used to say, 
with eager desire to have them lay off on him, if possible, a portion 
of their burdens. 

It was as a college teacher that Judson Smith won his first 
large influence. There are those here today who could tell you 
that their earliest conception of elegant scholarship was gained 
when they entered his class in Latin. They could tell you, too, 
how at first they feared him, for he was an exacting teacher; negli- 
gence in thought, no less than negligence in dress, was repugnant 
to him. But they soon came to love him, as they recognized his 




Rev. Judsox Smith, D.D., 
Secretary of tlie Foreign Department, A. B. C. F. M., from 1884-1906. 



ADDRESS IN MEMORY OF REV. JUDSON SMITH, D.D. 317 

concern for them, his throbbing fellowship with their aspirations 
and efforts. 

Along the road of Christian scholarship, Dr. Smith came to his 
place of leadership in missions. From the study of early Chris- 
tianity and its evangelizing grip upon the Roman world, he leaped 
to the full recognition of the fact that modern missions are ori- 
ginal Christianity reasserting and vindicating itself, and at once 
for him they became simply Christlike and apostolic. 

Some of us remember how, at the meeting of the Board in St. 
Louis, twenty-five years ago, when the founding of the Shansi 
Mission was announced, he told us of the coming of the young men 
into his study to confide to him that his teaching of church 
history had enkindled in them the purpose to form a missionary 
band, and to invite him to go with them as their leader in work in 
China. It did not seem wise to him to change thus radically the 
scene of his life-work, but his missionary ardor had a deeper 
personal quality from that hour, and his secretaryship in the Board 
was a natural outcome of the entire experience. Into it he threw 
his whole heart and his fullest conviction. And China, as we 
might expect, has seemed to have special claim upon his faith 
and service. After the Boxer cataclysm, when hope of progress 
appeared submerged perhaps for generations, and the question 
was raised as to the expediency of withdrawing from China for 
a time, or at least curtailing effort there, with what ringing affir- 
mation of the fundamentals of faith in the triumph of the kingdom, 
and what inspiring appeal to courage in the face of disaster, did 
he call upon us to reenforce our shattered ranks, and organize a 
great forward movement in the Chinese empire. How swiftly 
and signally the march of events has justified his prophetic words! 

Every detail of missionary service found its place in Dr. Smith's 
mind in the wide perspective of the kingdom of Christ. It was, 
therefore, impossible that anything could for him be trivial or 
uninteresting that had relation to the mighty whole. This kept 
him tireless in executive efficiency, and buoyant in his enthusiasm 
for whatever concerned any part of any remotest field. To his 
deep-seeing eyes the Lord of the kingdom appeared incarnate 
anew in each obscurest manifestation of his powxr and grace. 
On such terms it was great to live and glorious to be at work. 
The Ecumenical Missionary Conference of 1900 aroused and taxed 
his powers to the utmost. As chairman of the general committee 
he gave himself unreservedly to the great amount of detail involved. 



318 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

all of it being transfigured in his glowing spirit as (in his own 
words) '^ the story of Christ's advancing kingdom, a record more 
thrilling and more significant than any epic which man has pro- 
duced, or the thought of man has conceived." 

Long will he be vividly present in our thought at these annual 
gatherings; courtly of bearing, a high-bred gentleman, with a 
fine sense of the meaning and possibilities of an occasion; the 
vigorous form, the expressive face, the vibrant voice, the ardent 
greeting, all of these will live in our memories. How his soul 
would have been stirred by this anniversary! 

But he has passed from our sight. In one of his college addresses 
years ago he dwelt on Tennyson's '' Ulysses," commending the 
spirit which, after long experience of life, still finds " the un- 
traveled world " alluring, and is eager to push off, " made weak 
by time and fate, but strong in will to strive, to seek, to find, and 
not to yield." May we not think of him, under a like figure, as 
" sailing beyond the sunset," the breath of God upon his sail, 
passing out into the unseen universe as upon a divine adventure, 
facing toward some uncharted mission field where God has com- 
missioned him to serve. 

" And doubtless unto thee is given 
A life that bears immortal fruit, 
In those great offices that suit 
The full-grown energies of heaven." 



HOAV THE GOSPEL WORKS AMONG THE ZULUS. 319 

HOW THE GOSPEL WORKS AMONG THE ZULUS. 
Rev. Frederick B. Bridgman, of the South Africa Mission. 

The year 1806 was momentous in South African history. It 
was about this time that the mihtary genius, Chaka, appeared on 
the scene. This young warrior, by his prowess, secured the 
chieftainship of the Zulu tribe, then insignificant. He organized a 
standing army which was divided into regiments, estabhshed great 
mihtary kraals, and gave his soldiers a new weapon, compelling 
them to fight at close quarters. Death was made the penalty for 
retreat, whether it were one man or a thousand were guilty of 
cowardice. With an army small, but invincible, this dusky 
Napoleon began his career as conqueror. Within a few years he 
subjugated one hundred and fifty tribes, whose remnants were 
absorbed, thus forming the Zulu nation. By the welding of these 
tribes, by unifying the language through the spread of the beau- 
tiful and unique Zulu tongue, the bloodthirsty Chaka was used 
of God to prepare the way for the Prince of Peace. At this very 
time, in America, the spirit of Christ was stirring the hearts of 
young men to pray for the heathen world, was moving the pastors 
who met in Farmington to organize the American Board, and 
later, in 1835, God led Lindley, Adams, and Grout to offer them- 
selves for service among the Zulus. In this field, where eleven 
years passed before the first hopeful conversion, what has been 
accomplished? 

Consider the power of the gospel as seen in the life of one Zulu. 
Some years ago near our Inanda station lived a man in middle life. 
You know his appearance, a splendid physique, in this instance 
over six feet tall. His dress — a kilt of spotted wildcat skin, the 
bracelets of brass, the bead necklace, and his head crowned with 
a polished ebony-black ring sewed to the hair. You know his 
mode of life, a polygamist with his kraal of five or six huts built 
around the circular cattle pen. Of the beer drinks, the degrading 
superstitions, and the prevailing licentiousness I need but remind 
you; but somehow this stalwart Zulu of forty-five years becomes 
possessed with a desire for knowledge. He seeks the mission sta- 
tion, and it is said that just over the brow of the hill he halts that 
he may add a pair of trousers to the shirt he already wears. See 
this man bending over the alphabet, the sweat trickling down his 



320 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

face; but his perseverance brings victory. In the school he hears 
daily the gospel read and explained. At last, even against his own 
desire, the truth, he says, was forced upon him that God knew him, 
cared for him, loved him. From that moment this man testifies 
that he saw that he must make a break with his heathenism at 
whatever cost. But what about his three wives? For months 
he agonizes over this difficulty in prayer. Finally, he must return 
to his old kraal. On the way a messenger greets him saying, 
" Father, your wives have heard that you wish to choose the Lord. 
They send me to say that, as a Christian, they hear you can have but 
one wife. They have, therefore, agreed together who shall remain 
and who shall go." Drawing aside to a bush by the road this 
man falls upon his knees, pouring out his hea 't in praise for this 
miraculous deliverance. A farewell feast for his old associates, 
the cutting off of his head ring, a sacrifice which we can hardly 
measure, and its return to the chief with the present of an ox, 
and our convert stands forth a free man in the liberty of Christ 
Jesus. Today this man is one of our earnest, efficient preachers. 
Not long ago I attended a council called to organize a church, 
which he had gathered out of heathenism. Seventy converts, a 
church building, a day school, a parsonage, where I sat down to a 
well-cooked dinner served in civilized style, tell the story of this 
man's transformation and subsequent service. Such is the story 
of one Zulu prodigal brought back to the Father's house. 

Results of the Gospel. 

Now glance at what the gospel does in a communit}^ Some 
years ago three or four of our Christian families moved away and 
settled in a remote district. On Sunday they always met for 
worship, inviting their heathen neighbors. In that dark region 
these Christians lifted high the standard of strict discipline held 
by our Zulu churches, — no polygamy, no exchange of marriage- 
able daughters for cattle, the prohibition of intoxicants and native 
beer, the abandonment of all vice and the practice of the magic 
art. Unaided by any missionary, what have these people accom- 
plished? Visit Imp ap alia today, and you will find more than a 
score of well-built houses, five of them of brick. About these 
homes you will see groves and fruit trees. They raise crops which 
are a testimony to their industry. With their own hands these 
people have built a substantial brick church, seating two hundred. 
True to American Board traditions, they have erected near the 



HOW THE GOSPP^L WORKS AMONG THE ZULUS. 321 

church a schoolhouse, also of brick. The day school numbers 
some eighty pupils. In the surrounding country several out- 
stations have been established. Here we see the gospel salt 
saving and sweetening a community. 

Once more attend with me the annual meeting of the Zulu 
churches. First there assemble the delegates, sixty in number, 
for two days of business. After the devotional exercises there 
come the election of chairman and scribe, the reading of the min- 
utes, the adoption of an order of business, the making of motions, 
which are discussed and voted upon. You would be surprised to 
see that every man has a note book and pencil, for the delegate 
remembers that some church away off in the wilds has paid his 
traveling expenses and will hold him to strict account for a full 
report. When these people get together they mean business. 
The sessions often last far into the night. Several times I have 
been in session with these Zulu brethren from eight o'clock in the 
morning until three the next. The closing hour of the business 
meeting is devoted to receiving the year's contributions to the 
missionary society. As the roll of churches is read, the delegates 
respond by coming forward and depositing their contributions 
with the treasurer. Applause greets those who bring the full 
assessment, while an exhortation is given those who have failed 
in their duty. The business over, there follow four days of reli- 
gious services. From far and near, by railway, ox cart, and on 
foot, hundreds of visitors come pouring in. How I wish you 
might attend this feast of tabernacles! You would be thrilled 
by the hearty congregational singing. You would be impressed 
by the earnest prayers, and marvel at the eloquent and instructive 
sermons. Not least you would rejoice in the prayerful, reverent 
spirit pervading the whole assembly. In these Zulu churches, 
self-supporting, largely self-governing, self-propagating, we see 
the gospel leaven saving not only the individual or community, 
but permeating a people. We see the promise of a race yielding 
glad allegiance to Christ the King! 

But the Zulu mission has not reached its goal. It was not 
planted for the evangelization of Natal and Zululand alone. The 
churches, common schools, boarding institutions, and theological 
seminaries, the Zulu literature created, the industrial and medical 
departments, have all been established as a base of supply, a base 
for operations that should at least cover the regions conquered by 
Chaka and his generals one hundred years ago. Toward this end 



322 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

a beginning has indeed been made. In Gazaland, one thousand 
miles north of Natal, a little band of missionaries, with their 
splendid Zulu helpers, have done a great work. Profiting by what 
has already been done in Natal, the Gaza mission has already been 
able to accomplish in twelve years what required twice or thrice 
that time in the Zulu mission. Last year another strategic point 
was occupied, when the Ruth Tracy Strong station was opened at 
Beira. And yet again advance northward has been made in the 
strange, unexpected, but clearly providential way. The devotees 
of mammon have invaded South Africa, and diamonds and gold 
have built great cities in the wilderness. But we do not believe 
that God's purpose in this commercial development is the gratifi- 
cation of greed, or the aggrandizement of empire. Look at 
Johannesburg, with its hundred thousand native workmen. They 
come from the east as far as the Indian Ocean, four hundred miles, 
from the west to the Atlantic, from the south, and from the north 
as far as the Zambesi and even beyond. These natives of every 
tribe have not come to the city to stay. No, they will work for 
six months or a year, then back they go to their distant kraals. 
What an opportunity for the Church of Christ to reach these men, 
to touch with the love of God, and send them back, not as emis- 
saries of the white man's vices, but as the heralds of the Saviour 
Jesus! This is no dream. It has actually been done again and 
again. Two or three men converted in our Pretoria church re- 
turned to their homes, four hundred miles distant, carrying in 
their hearts the love of God, and in their hands the Zulu Bible, 
hymn book, and primer. In that dark district called the Place 
of Lions these young Christians set to work. God has honored his 
Word, even though preached and exemplified in a very crude and 
imperfect way. Today in that region you would find eight 
chapels, stationed from five to ten miles apart; you would see 
about one hundred church members, besides many candidates for 
baptism. Such is the reach of work done in the city. It affords 
a marvelous opportunity for the rapid and economical evangeli- 
zation of many untouched tribes. But despite the ten years of 
pleading, the Zulu Mission stands only on the threshold of this 
open door. We can get neither the men nor the means to enter in. 

Outlook for the Future. . 

Notwithstanding the unquestioned results, notwithstanding 
great and inviting opportunities,''the work of this Board in South 



HOW THE GOSPEL WORKS AMONG THE ZULUS. 323 

Africa is in the most critical condition. It is not now a question 
of advancing, it is a question whether we shall retreat, whether 
we can even hold the ground already gained. For years both the 
Gaza and Zulu missions have been desperately calling for help. 
In both fields the workers are at the breaking point; some have 
already broken down. For years the Zulu Mission has called for 
a minimum force of twelve men. Today there are eight men on 
the field and yet the work is greater, the burdens heavier, the 
problems more perplexing than ever before. On top of it all, for 
six months, a Zulu insurrection, in which five thousand natives 
were killed, has been in progress. Last July some of our church 
members, in obedience to their chief, joined the insurrectionists. 
As a result, three of our stations were destro3^ed, the houses 
burned, property confiscated, and today the women and children 
are left on the hillsides without food or shelter. The sad, sad 
fact which you, representatives of the Congregational churches, 
must face is this, — that the mission beheves had it been properly 
reenforced, this devastation and death would have been averted. 
This recent rebeUion is but a phase of the great race problem 
which is every day becoming more acute. Yesterday it was Boer 
against Briton. Today it is white against black. Tomorrow this 
racial antagonism will compass the continent. But the real 
battle ground will be in South Africa. It is there that the ques- 
tion of race relationship will be solved for all Africa. It is from 
the south — northward — that commerce and civili-zation are 
making their irresistible march. It is from the south that Africa 
is to be won for Christ! The missions of the American Board 
occupy strategic posts. Did I not believe that the churches would 
rally to our support, I would hesitate to leave again for Africa,- as 
I expect to do next moQth. 



324 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

A PLEA FOR THE MEDICAL WORK IN CHINA. 
Rev. H. N. KiNNEAR, M.D. 

It is a great pleasure to represent your medical work in China 
at this notable meeting. I have ten minutes in which to say a 
thousand words, to win a hundred thousand dollars for the medical 
work in China. The appeal for the medical work is based upon 
the example as well as the teachings of our Master. He always 
emphasized the importance of his works of heahng. He gave his 
disciples the power to heal disease and to cast out devils, and 
directed them to use those powers in doing good, quite as definitely 
as he directed them to preach the gospel. Medical work in China 
is the church in the guise of the Good Samaritan, ministering to 
the suffering neighbor over the way. It is this work which makes 
the words of the Christian preacher live. It brings Christianity 
into most marked and favorable contrast with the old religions of 
China. 

Confucianism gives many rules for the guidance of '' the superior 
man," but has never provided in any way for the unfortunate one. 
Buddhism ascribes great merit to the man who keeps fish, birds, 
or animals alive until they die a natural death, but for the sick or 
injured man it has provided no asylum. Taoism countenances the 
removal to the street of dying strangers, servants, and apprentices, 
because of the fear of the spirits of the dead which it inculcates. 
In contrast with these, Christianity comes with its hospitals and 
kind care for the unfortunate, a hopeful, helpful, uplifting, living 
force that the dullest can understand. 

There is no form of mission work about which the testimony of 
the Chinese themselves is so uniformly favorable. Rich and poor, 
high and low. Christian and non-Christian, unite in expressing, in 
unqualified terms, their appreciation of the medical work. Medi- 
cal missions are not only appreciated in China, but they find their 
widest field of usefulness there. Its hundreds of millions of 
people, its lack of knowledge of medical science, and especially its 
entire want of surgical knowledge and practice, and the general 
indifference to suffering in others, unite to prove to us that if we 
would preach Christ to this people, we must do something more 
than to say " Go in peace; be thou fed and clothed and healed." 

If we could bring before you a group of our patients, and make 



A PLEA FOR THE MEDICAL WORK IN CHINA. 325 

you realize what it means to live in a country without hospitals 
and intelligent medical care, I am sure that this body of Christians 
would be the center of such a wave of enthusiasm for the medical 
work that we would not need to make another such plea as this 
during this generation. 

I can see them now, cannot you? The old man, that is first led 
in, has cataracts. Your medical worker is ready to give his knowl- 
edge and skill. Will you use them to give sight to the bhnd? 

Here comes the widow, the bones of whose first finger are dead, 
and the whole hand diseased. She has suffered misery and been 
half fed for weeks. The finger must be removed. Cocaine is 
used, and after the work is done the woman asks if we are not 
ready to begin cutting yet. Are you willing to furnish the dress- 
ings for this case? It will cost a dollar or so before she is well, but 
will you not find pleasure in her gratitude, and in seeing her regain 
the use of her hand? 

This is a little girl with sore eyes. It is a common trouble, and 
.often causes blindness. And blindness in a girl in China usually 
leads to the brothel. The medicine with which to treat her, and 
perhaps save her sight, and indirectly her soul, will cost a few 
cents. Is it worth while? 

The next is a man with ulcers on his legs, type of hundreds that 
come to us 1^ they are not pleasant to look at. No member of the 
man's own family is willing to wash the sores for him. Let us 
wash the limb, remove the collected discharges, curette away the 
diseased granulations, dress and bandage it, and see how rapidly 
it will heal, and how friendly the man will become as he notes our 
willingness to do whatever is necessary to heal him. 

Yesterday afternoon a tiger sprang upon this man and shattered 
his elbow with a vicious bite. An effort was made to stop the 
bleeding by stuffing the wound with the ashes of a burned felt 
hat, and wrapping it in soiled rags. An amputation will save the 
man's life, and only the foreign surgeon can do this for him. He 
seems to think that his life is worth saving. Do you? 

This man is blind because an enemy, it may have been an 
offended brother, has rubbed quicklime into his eyes, a com- 
mon crime in Foochow. An iridectomy, to make a new pupil, will 
give him his sight again. We leave it to you to decide whether 
he shall be left in darkness the remainder of his life or not. 

The next is a boy with a splinter of dead bone in his leg. He 
has suffered pain for months and perhaps years, and the Chinese 



326 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

doctors can do nothing for him. The opening in the leg is enlarged, 
the dead bone is taken out, and we have another case that will 
need a few dimes' worth of dressing material before he is able to 
walk again. 

We are astonished to have this small boy tell us that he is nine- 
teen years old. When he uncovers his arm we find the reason for 
his under-development. Seven years ago, when he was twelve 
years old, a snake bit his hand. To prevent the swelling reaching 
the body, a Chinese doctor directed that a ligature be placed 
around the arm above the elbow. We find the arm and hand a 
mass of disease, discharging great quantities of pus from numerous 
openings. Nothing can restore the arm to usefulness, but it can 
be removed at the shoulder and insure the boy returning health 
and freedom from pain. 

And here is a leper. Pray do not turn away from him, for it's 
a sad enough thing to be a leper. He has tried to rid himself 
of one of the diseased patches by applying a caustic, and we must 
clean and dress the sloughing, leprous sore that is left. He has 
no other place to go for such help, and we shall find him one of 
our most appreciative patients, and most ready to listen to the 
religious teachings of men who do such things for him. 

And so the procession of from forty to a hundred cases passes 
before us every day, some cases more serious than these, and 
many much less so. 

In this way the mission hospitals bring within the sound of the 
gospel an audience of people who are disposed, by the kindness 
they have received, to listen attentively, day after day, as long as 
they come for treatment, an audience gathered, not from some 
smalL neighborhood, but from a wide area. The missionary 
physician does not need to travel to reach people with the gospel. 
They come to him. 

The constituencies of other boards appreciate the medical work 
and support it generously, because they find that it pays. In 
Fukien province the Methodist mission has built, in district 
towns, hospitals that have cost ten thousand dollars. They have 
left to us the work at Foochow, the provincial capital, with its 
million of people, the most stragetic point of all, and we have al- 
ready allowed this most important work to remain five years 
without a building. This is our oldest medical work in China, 
having been established thirty-five years, but it is losing prestige 
and influence, precious souls are losing an opportunity to hear 



A PLEA FOR THE MEDICAL WORK IN CHINA. 327 

the gospel; and a valuable part of your worker's life is being 
wasted, because the funds needed for the new building and equip- 
ment have not been raised. This is only one of the many cases of 
need in the medical work, of a failure to appreciate the value of 
the tools within our reach. In the North China Mission some 
medical work has had to be discontinued for want of funds, while 
in other places where it is needed, it is not opened for the same 
reason. 

Reports come from your medical workers telling of thousands, 
tens and hundreds of thousands, of treatments given every year, 
but the amount which the American Board is enabled to appro- 
priate for this work is pitifully small. This means that too 
much of your worker's time and strength must be used in raising 
money from every available source, or that he must draw upon 
his own salary in order to be able to do the work at all. While 
Christian people are so generous in giving to hospitals here in 
America, may we not reasonably hope that our call for help in 
doing the same kind of work in China, where the need is infinitely 
greater, may come to listening ears? 

We have again led you to see the wounded " neighbor," and 
you know his needs. Do not, I pray you, pass by on the other 
side, but fill the bottles with the oil of love and the wine of self- 
sacrifice, and thus do the same work that Jesus would certainly 
do if he were to walk the streets of a Chinese city today. 

A few days ago a friend of the Board told me that after the 
battle of Gettysburg there was a group of wounded men who had 
fallen into the bed of a small brook and were half covered with 
mud, being unable to move. Some Young Men's Christian Asso- 
ciation workers asked, " Shall we pray for you ? " and one of the 
men replied, " Just pull us out of the mud first and then you can 
pray all you want to." Human nature is the same all over the 
world. Do something to help the man that needs you if you want 
him to have confidence in your religion. 



328 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 



THE WORK AND THE MISSIONARY. 

Rev. Elwood G. Tewksbury, 
Missionary at Tung-chou, North China. 

New and strange conditions in the far East demand our earnest 
attention. This has been recognized by the urgent requests from 
the missions for visiting deputations. Attention is also being 
almost daily called to the East by the press, your government 
officials are anxiously watching constant diplomatic develop- 
ments, your merchants are uncertain as to their future markets, 
and it is not strange that your missionaries should call on you to 
study carefully the situation, and seek your help in the use of 
measures fitted to the crisis before us. A science of missions there 
is, or should be, and one of its tenets will be, that no one method 
of missionary work should have the same emphasis at all times 
and in all fields. Each field and crisis demands separate treat- 
ment and that only after careful and scientific study of the 
conditions. 

We may state briefly the changes that have been and are now 
affecting most the missionary situation, but withoui an oppor- 
tunity to state the causes that underlie these changes. First, 
and perhaps the most important, in that it underlies all the others, 
is the predominant influence of Japan upon China, in politics, 
industry, education, and reUgion. The converse of this is the 
waning of other foreign influence along the same lines. And 
the third, a corollary to the others, in being more or less directly 
incited by Japanese conditions and progress, is the new national 
spirit, manifested in the cry, " China for the Chinese." That in 
Japanese influence which we have most to fear is the materialistic 
tendency of her civilization, as at present manifested in press 
and publication. That in the national spirit that affects mission 
effort adversely is the order of the awakening. Political, military, 
and commercial independence, and education as ministering to 
material progress, come first in popular demand. But that which 
is absolutely fundamental, — the growth of ethical and religious 
purity, — finds as yet little congenial soil. Would that the peo- 
ple of the East might search and truly find the true Source of 
that life and truth which underlies the civilizations whose 



THE WORK AND THE MISSIONARY. 329 

products they are appropriating, but whose roots may fail to grow 
in ahen soil 

As in Japan, independence, poHtical and commercial, will ac- 
centuate the desire and perhaps the demand for a free and inde- 
pendent church. We distinctly face the possibility in the not 
distant future of leaving (willingly or by invitation) the native 
church to the support and control of the Chinese themselves. 
This has already taken place as regards the Congregational 
churches of Japan. Not only is it the hope of the missionary, but 
the set purpose for which this Board exists, to found in non- 
Christian lands a self-supporting, self-governing, and self-propa- 
gating native church. To this end missionary and Board for 
well-nigh a century have bent their medical, evangeUstic, and edu- 
cational agencies; and looking toward this glorious possibility the 
churches of America have given of their prayers and substance and 
life. It may, therefore, seem strange that the possibility of facing 
the Japan situation in China within perhaps a decade fills your 
missionaries with anxiety. But it is anxiety lest these churches, 
too soon willing to dispense with advice and help, may be left weak, 
financially and spiritually. It is fear lest, being unable properly 
to train their ministry and nurture their membership, they will be 
open to the materialistic and sociological temptations of the period. 
But the possibility and the hope that we may live to see in China 
thoroughly spiritual and aggressive native churches, associa- 
ting in practical working union, animated by the Holy Spirit, 
and eager to save the land they love " for Christ and the Church," 
— this should offset our anxieties. 

Conditions of Work in North China. 

I am now asking 3^ou for a few moments to study a circumscribed 
region in North China where mission work has been carried on 
for some forty years. The region includes Manchuria, Chihli, 
and the northwest Shantung, and embraces the work of some 
six English and four American missions. It has a population of 
perhaps forty million, of whom twenty thousand are Christian. 
Among the hundreds of native churches in this district, there are 
but few which are wholly self-supporting, and at present prob- 
ably none absolutely independent of foreign control. Grant, then, 
that our task continues to be, to establish in this region many 
self-supporting, self-governing, and self -propagating churches; 
and that the exigencies of the occasion demand great haste and 



330 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

concentrated effort. The native church needs to emphasize 
three things: (1) An educated, consecrated, and enthusiastic 
native ministry; (2) a well-nurtured, earning and working mem- 
bership; and (3) in the opinion of many mission leaders, it need 
not be bound by present denominational lines, but be ^^ union " in 
its sympathies, its doctrines, and its activities. 

First, as to the native ministry. Of this there are at present 
among the eight hundred Christian workers of the district perhaps 
forty pastors and some four hundred preachers, evangelists, etc. 
The leadership to which these men may be called implies conse- 
cration, education, enthusiasm, and many other characteristics. 
Two thirds, however, of the workers having been converted in 
middle life, a thorough Christian education has, of course, been 
impossible. Of the remaining third, only a few dozen have what 
would be the equivalent of a college and seminary course in the 
United States. Regarding enthusiasm, we are forced to believe 
there are many in the work who would prefer other positions, or 
who for various reasons are unhappy in a '' calling " without the 
'' call," fatal to a great enthusiasm for Christ and his Church. 
Regarding consecration, two dangers, shallowness and " crust- 
hardening," assail an uneducated ministry. Two temptations, 
neglect of devotional Bible study and spiritual laxity, are not 
lessened by isolation amidst heathen surroundings. If, then, it 
is true that our preachers need education, both general and special, 
a deeper knowledge of God's Word, a closer association with their 
fellows in Christian work; if we crave for them such a view of 
their country and its need of the Saviour as shall win the Spirit's 
call for fervent service, should we not emphasize such special 
agencies as seek to bring about the results desired? If the 
agencies needed do not exist, let us create new ones. We have 
many schools which have done wonderfully effective work. If, 
however, the spirit of the times is so permeating the youth that 
the graduates of our present schools are seeking other pursuits 
rather than the service of the Church, let us have new agencies 
to find out and educate men who cannot but give their lives " for 
Christ and the Church." If Bible and normal training are needed, 
let us have institutions that can specialize in this work. If iso- 
lation is keeping back the spiritual growth of our agents, let us 
multiply our conferences and our summer schools, where the 
best that any one man has may be shared by all. If the 
workers cannot come to us, let us reach them in their homes, 



THE WORK AND THE MISSIONARY. 331 

with our local conferences, our loan libraries, and our corre- 
spondence courses. Keep them in touch with all that is best in 
all the missions, and '' Christianity will become a more glorious 
fact and Christian unity a present possession." 

One main reason why we have so few self-supporting churches is 
that the Christian membership has within it few who are rich. 
A large majority of our members come from the farming and 
middle working classes. The money earnings of most are, there- 
fore, very little above the actual daily expenditure. Perhaps no 
one material benefit that you could help us secure would so | aid 
in the establishment of self-supporting churches as the endow- 
ment of industrial and trade schools where young men may be 
taught useful trades and industries and such new or improved 
methods as may increase the earning power of the Christian 
community. This need is seen most clearly by our native helpers. 
What use for committees to urge self-support on the missions 
unless they encourage the use of the means necessary to bring 
about the desired results? It is not only that the people be urged 
to give, but that they may be made able to give. But money is 
far from being the only essential. Such is the ease with which 
adherents may be secured at this day, that some of our wisest 
leaders have almost to call a halt until forces are available for 
nurture and training. It is workers we must have, nor is it 
money alone that will secure them. If we are at all to enter the 
open door in this new China, we must be able to use wisely all 
whom God has called, whether they be graduates or laymen. If 
laymen, you must give us the means to train them for service, for 
untrained men are often worse than useless. We cannot wait for 
our college men, and if we did wait but few would be available, 
and nowhere is time so precious as at this very crisis in China's 
life struggle. We must educate the workers that they may 
nurture the members. Nurture at this time is perhaps more 
acutely demanded even than extension. 

As to the union we all so much desire and work for, — spasmodi- 
cally, — great advances have been made since the Boxer destruc- 
tion, and these have made reorganization comparatively easy. 
Greater advances would have come if opposition at home had not 
overturned plans formed on the field. But the greatest advances 
are bound to appear when the native church is able to be free. 
For that day we are all praying, but in fear and trembling, al- 
though full of trust that God's Spirit may so mightily move upon 



332 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

the native pastors that the truth, as it is in God's own Word, 
being their guide, his Spirit may ever animate their doctrines, their 
worship, and their enthusiasms. 

Points to be Emphasized. 

I cannot close without stating certain points of emphasis in my 
own Ufe and character, and that of my fellow-missionaries, which 
might well be accentuated to meet the needs of our time. To 
accomplish the results we are seeking, the missionary himself 
needs to be economical, inspiring, fundamental, dispensable, and 
a hundred other things besides. I will speak a word concerning 
the first four characteristics only. 

You need the economical missionary. A Chinese dollar is 
worth, in the market, but half your own, but in Christian work 
vastly more. We need to be most careful to use your money as 
the farmer uses his fertilizer, — to further and foster native effort. 
What is done for a people cannot be compared with what we inspire 
them to do for themselves. It is not extravagance that you allow 
your missionaries comfortable homes and a support adequate to 
their needs; it is merely sound business policy. On the other 
hand, we must remember that one unmarried missionary's salary 
would pay that of a half-dozen and more native pastors, and it 
should concern us all to be '^ worthy our hire " in the Lord's 
vineyard. 

We must also be inspiring. It is a common criticism that 
missionaries seek to reach their audiences by destroying faith in 
the old gods. Would that we had a correct word for the true 
preacher. Should he not be an idealist, one who sees visions, 
vistas of truth and love, and is so helped of God's Spirit that he 
can reveal these to his people, and inspire them to better faith and 
lives — the inspirational missionary, if you please, himself seeing 
the vision, then inspiring others to see and act? And this not only 
with heathen; with our own students and helpers it is the same. 
Today there is no place (has there ever been one?) for the dicta- 
torial missionary, who would '' lord it over the churches." It is 
by influence, not authority, that the new China may, for a time at 
least, be guided to a higher life. Compel this in your older men, 
make it axiomatic in your selection of new men. 

And again, we need fundamental missionaries, men who empha- 
size that which is fundamental. The kingdom of heaven lies for 
China through a gate, and many forces are seeking to help her 



THE WORK AND THE MISSIONARY. 333 

toward that gate of progress. Material prosperity, her railroads 
and her mines, her schools and printing presses, attempts to 
free herself from superstition and conservatism, — these all seem 
to tend toward the goal of her ambitions. Japan has preceded, 
and almost entered the promised land. But we to whom has been 
revealed the truth know that not thus is the gate opened into the 
kingdom of heaven; know that each step of material progress, 
in her present moral and spiritual condition, but makes entrance 
into the kingdom more difficult, — a nation approaching a closed 
gate without the key. The key is Christ; it is held by the Church 
he founded with his own precious blood. Moral and spiritual life, 
by the indwelling of his Spirit, is essential to true progress in the 
East. Given life from above, the gate to the kingdom of heaven 
will open to these Eastern peoples, and all that is wonderful and 
great and true and good in civilization follow. May her mission- 
aries, may the deputation you send, may the churches that 
send us out, cling to that which is fundamental. And in this 
sociological, ethical, materialistic age may we truly believe our- 
selves, and preach to others, the gospel as it is in Jesus who is 
the only way and truth and life for us, as for China. We do not 
want teachers, we want teaching missionaries; not doctors, but 
medical evangelists; only such missionaries as shall themselves 
truly know what is fundamental, and be quaUfied and inspired of 
the Spirit to win others to their faith. In the vision of Ezekiel 
God gives sinews and flesh and skin for the dry bones, and a body 
is formed, but dead. " Breath " — the spirit — is called from 
the '' four winds," and the dead live. That which is fundamental 
is the Spirit of God. So the East today seeks to clothe bones, 
dry for centuries, with sinew and flesh and skin. The corpse is 
becoming more beautiful and promising each day. But here, as 
of old, the Holy Spirit, through his messengers from the " four 
winds," must animate hearts now dead to his influence, civiliza- 
tions as yet insensible of their need, nations ignorant of that 
which is absolutely essential and fundamental. " Prophesy " to 
them, that they may live and ^' stand upon their feet, an exceed- 
ing great army! " 

And finally, we must be dispensable. The true missionary is 
sent with a message, a messenger only. The duty called for in his 
message must be done by the people to whom his message is 
delivered. It is alone our prayer that strength and time permit 
God's Spirit so to work through us as to fix deep and strong in his 



334 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

Chinese church the truth which we witness in his name. We 
welcome the rise of Chinese pastor and elder, glad indeed to resign 
into consecrated native hands the conduct of our Master's work. 
They must increase, and we are glad to decrease. The wise 
missionary is he who trains his students with the definite end of 
future leadership clearly in sight, who seizes the psychological 
moment in each phase of work when native leadership will best 
advance its interests, who so plans his work that new and, perhaps, 
untried lines of activity await his freedom from earlier tasks, who, 
after being indispensable in many spheres, can rejoice in seeing, 
while himself dispensable, those whom the Holy Spirit has 
inspired through his instiumentality carry forward each uncom- 
pleted task to its true fulfillment. 

Such is the glorious privilege and the hope of your missionaries 
in the far East. Economical, inspiring, fundamental, dispensable, 
we try to be, but at least praying to be used of God in found- 
ing self-supporting, self-governing, and self-propagating native 
churches. An educated, enthusiastic, and consecrated Chinese 
ministry; a well-nurtured, earning, and working memberships- 
denominational lines obliterated, a united Church of Christ in 
China, — for this you have sent us to the East. You have planted, 
God will '' give the increase." The vision is an even more glorious 
one than could have animated Mills and his comrades under the 
haystack one hundred years ago — for the consummation is nearer. 



MADURA MISSION AXD ITS WORK. 335 



MADURA MISSION AND ITS WORK. 
Rev. John S. Chandler. 

One hundred years ago Madura was a fortified city of twenty 
thousand people, walled in by seventy-two bastions. Now it has 
one hundred and six thousand people, and in place of those 
bastions there are four churches, two hospitals, a college, a large 
school for girls, one for training Bible women, and other insti- 
tutions. Its great temple, covering more than thirteen acres, 
was its chief glory, and made it the center of Hindu worship for 
all South India. Its magnificent palace was in ruins, signifying 
its complete subjugation by the East India Company. There 
were no Protestant Christians within its walls. The Roman 
Catholic mission of the previous two centuries had been suspended. 
Magic, sorcery, widow burning, exorcism of devils, hook swinging, 
self-torture, and self-immolation were practiced in the city and 
villages round about. 

For twenty-four years thereafter no missionary work was done, 
except an occasional tour through the district, a field larger than 
the state of Massachusetts. In 1830 the Jesuit mission was 
reestablished. In 1834 Rev. Levi Spaulding of the Ceylon Mission 
explored the field, and recommended that his mission extend 
their work to Madura. The}^ forthwith sent over two American 
missionaries with three native assistants. These started a work 
that has grown continuously from that day to this, along almost 
all lines of the missionary endeavor. 

At first the Hindu leaders despised the missionaries as pariahs 
from America, striving to awaken in the minds of the people the 
same contempt that they felt for the Portuguese Roman Catholic 
priests. Later, when they saw the missionaries, and especially 
the missionary ladies, treated with attention and courtesy by 
British officials at public functions, they were enlightened, but 
still inimical. 'A missionary who tried to teach a poor woman 
that a clay idol was nothing, by breaking it, was put into court 
and fined the few cents the idol was worth. ^^Tien a missionar}^ 
preached his belief that they would all become Christians, a Brah- 
man jeeringly replied that the white men had not money enough 
to pay for so many converts. W^en a missionary found a stone 
idol on mission land and struck off its head the Hindus declared 



336 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

that vengeance would fall upon him. It happens that that mis- 
sionary had the longest service of any one ever appointed to the 
mission. Another of the early missionaries was touring thirty-five 
miles from his home when he rested under a tree near a large 
village. He knelt and prayed that God would establish his 
church in that place, and now the spot where he prayed is the site 
of a prayer house, and it is surrounded by the houses of Christians. 
The growth of the mission has been a part of the growth of the 
whole town. 

The basis of all our progress is the Christian community of 
twenty thousand men, women, and children that have come out 
from more than thirty castes in five hundred villages, and are now 
the living witnesses to the Hindu and Mohammedan communities 
of the power of God in Christ to reconcile the world to himself. 
They are not perfect, but to multitudes of non-Christians they 
are the only witnesses they have. Let me place before you, the 
honored representatives of the churches, the pressing needs of 
our people. 

First, the missionaries. They are all anxious to do their 
best work and improve opportunities of reaching the millions of 
people about them, as such opportunities arise. For this they 
need your intelligent and prayerful interest and effort. Their 
best work demands efficiency, and the first requisite for efficiency 
is an abundant spiritual life. Will you not ask for them at the 
throne of grace the abiding presence of God's Spirit, opening your 
own hearts to his power, and letting him give you the heavenly 
vision of God's love for all his children in his offer of salvation? 
In the light of this vision your prayers will be avaihng for the 
quickening of the missionary's spiritual life. 

(1) The missionary's efficiency can only be maintained by com- 
radeship with God's people at home. Are we not all comrades in 
the work of the kingdom? Is not the heavenly Father bringing all 
his children the world over into the same inheritance of knowledge 
and civilization and spiritual life? Then when vacancies occur 
will not some of you join your missionary comrades and become 
missionaries with them? The field and the work of the mission is 
divided up into a certain number of stations and departments for 
the sake of the most effective work, and each section is a unit. 
The Madura Mission has organized ten stations and five separate 
departments for men, and seven departments for women, twenty- 
two units in all, thus requiring fifteen men and seven single 



MADURA MISSION AND ITS WORK. 337 

women. At present there are on the field only twelve men and 
four single women, sixteen workers for twenty-two units of work. 
That means excessive work, and that not the effective work that 
they and you wish to have done. Are there no comrades ready 
now to come and fill the vacant places? 

(2) The best work of the missionary also demands means. 
Old work, proved and growing, needs to be maintained. Said a 
Hindu: " We change, and our work is frequently given up, but 
these missionaries never give up, and their work goes on unceas- 
ingly." That certainly is the desire of every missionary. But 
after a twenty-five per cent reduction of funds for a dozen years, 
and then a further ten per cent reduction last year, it has been 
impossible to keep up to the Hindu's estimate. 

But successful work under God creates new openings. Shall 
we not have the means available to enter such openings? For 
instance, a street full of poor people some years ago asked to be 
organized into a congregation, in a village where no Christian 
work had ever been established. The missionary had no money 
to support a catechist there, and had to do what could be done by 
occasional visits on the part of himself and his fellow-workers. 
Oppressed by Hindu masters, ignorant of Bible truth, without 
any regular instruction, they have remained in heathenism; 
whereas a resident catechist and personal influence might have 
led them into the truth. Opportunities are continually presenting 
themselves, but for want of money or men they frequently pass 
and are lost. Such opportunities bring joy to a Christian's heart, 
but the joy is turned to sorrow when they are lost. 

(3) A condition for the missionary's best work is the pres- 
ence of a trained company of native workers. Thirty-three 
Americans, twenty-two for the units of work, and eleven wives, 
can personally reach but few of the two and a half millions of the 
people of the mission's district. But they can multiply them- 
selves many fold by training and sending out into the towns and 
villages Indian Christian workers. These catechists, teachers, 
Bible women, and medical assistants are a part of the very life 
of the country; they live among their own people, sharing their 
peculiar joys and sorrows, customs and habits, prejudices and 
modes of thinking. But by their Christian principles and training 
they become channels of grace, whereby blind eyes are opened, 
deaf ears are unstopped, new life is imparted, light shines in dark 
places, and the presence of the heavenly Father is revealed 



338 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. "■ ' 

through an atmosphere of love and compassion. We thank the 
Lord for the five hundred fellow-workers now cooperating with the 
missionaries. Their numbers should be doubled, but many of 
them have not the training necessary for the work, and our train- 
ing schools should be kept up to a high standard that all increase 
of numbers should mean an increase of well-trained and proved 
workers. 

Second, the Christian community. The Christian community 
backs up this plea of the missionaries, that they may be guided 
and taught with a view to fitting them to be instruments in 
God's hand of turning their countrymen to the true God. They 
have been gathered out of thirty different castes mutually exclu- 
sive of one another, with different tastes and customs, and their 
union is in Christ rather than in the bond of relationship. 

A Tamil proverb says, '' Will not the vine sustain its own fruit? " 
The American Board is the vine and the missions are its fruit. 
Let me show you how it has been able to sustain the general work 
of our mission this year. It has given $14,000, and this sum has 
been divided up as follows: We have 150 catechists to work and 
preach among the congregations, and for them we need an average 
sum of $50 each per year. That would require $7,500. We 
receive $5,500, or enough for 110, leaving 40 unprovided for and 
a deficiency of $2,000. There are 150 teachers in the primary 
schools all over the district. We aim to get fees enough to 
support one third, or 50, of them. But the remaining 100 need 
$5,000. We get $2,300, which provides for 46 out of the 100, and 
leaves 54 unprovided for, with a deficiency of $2,700. 

For the training of our workers we have three impo^^tant insti- 
tutioTLS, a college, a normal training school, and a theological 
seminary. For these we receive $2,500. Our fees amount to 
another $2,500, and government aid sometimes amounts to a 
similar sum. But $7,500 is small enough for either one. We 
should at least have $600 more for the three. There are 700 
buildings in use for the accommodation of the workers and 
worshipers, worth each from $15 to $1,500. For the repair and 
rebuilding of these we receive $700, or an average of $1 to a 
building. For these we need $700 more; surely $2 to a building 
is moderate. 

There are 20 medical agents requiring $1,000; we receive $350. 
This provides for 7, and we are trying to support the remaining 
13 by other means. For our evangelistic efforts we have 200 



MADURA MISSION AND ITS WORK. 339 

workers to work among 2,500,000 people, and the amount received 
is $1,300, or $6.50 on an average for each worker for a year. This 
leaves a remainder of $1,350 to be divided between the printing 
press that publishes each year three papers a month, half a million 
pages in English, and a million pages in Tamil; taxes that are due 
to the state; and office expenses connected with the treasury and 
other business of the mission. 
Tabulated, these items are as follows: 

Allotment. Deficit. 

150 catechists $5,500 $2,000 

100 teachers 2,300 2,700 

College, seminary, and training school . . 2,500 600 

700 buildings 700 700 

20 medical agents 350 

Evangelistic work among 2,500,000 . . . 1,300 

Press, taxes, office expenses 1,350 

Total $14,000 $6,000 

For our present work we need at least $20,000 per year. 

The progress of the work is illustrated by the history of many a 
family. Years ago a Bible reader of very meager education, but 
something of a preacher and singer, received two dollars a month 
wages. He brought up his sons in a Christian way, and sent three 
of them to the mission boarding school. He could not teach them 
much himself, but he could impart to them his spirit of consecra- 
tion to the Lord Jesus. The eldest, who did not study beyond the 
village school, is an intelligent layman among the Christians of the 
village, another son is an ordained pastor and an earnest evangel- 
istic preacher, another is a teacher in a neighboring mission, and 
the youngest is an instructor in the theological seminary, and also 
a leader in important evangelistic movements. All the sons have 
their father's musical gift and have done much for Christian song. 
The theological instructor has been largely instrumental in the 
establishment of a home mission by the Madura Christians in the 
northern part of the district. They are supporting an ordained 
preacher, an evangelist, and a teacher in a populous region where 
there is no other Christian work. You are helping these Christians 
by your prayers and offerings, and they in turn are working for 
their countrymen. 

Third, the community at large. I must bring before you 
some of the needs of the community at large. There is need of 



340 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

more instruction in Bible truth for all classes of the community. 
Let me tell you of certain homes. In one, the father is convinced 
of his need of Christ, and often attends a little gathering of Chris- 
tians for prayer, asking that his own needs may be remembered. 
His daughter is a child widow, under the influence of Hindu 
relatives who are likely to lead her astray, and the great desire 
of his heart is to get his daughter to his own home and put her 
into a Christian school. But the daughter and the rest of the 
family care not for Christian life. They are Brahmans. 

In another home the wife has learned about Christ, and for a 
long time tried to give up the worship of idols in her own home. 
Her husband beat her and abused her, so that she ran away to 
the missionary lady, and made known her condition. The storm 
of resentment raised by this act was such that she soon went back 
to her own relatives and then to her husband; and now she is 
not allowed to see any Christians or show any indication of being 
a Christian. 

Another home is that of a young man who broke his caste and 
declared himself to be a Christian, but was sent to the house of 
relatives and kept under guard, until he was persuaded to marry 
a girl of the family, and now has given up his thought of being a 
Christian. Still another is that of a Mohammedan who has more 
than one wife. The second has left his home and gone to a distant 
place, where she has been baptized, knowing no other way of 
living a Christian life. 

In each of these homes there is a one-sidedness of influence. 
Could the children of that father, and the husbands of those two 
wives, and the parents of that young man, have been brought 
under Christian influence, they would have helped and not 
hindered the several members of the families who wished to be 
Christians. Literally, a man's foes are those of his own household. 

This condition of society is inevitable in the beginning of 
Christian work, but as more children are taught the truth in 
school, and as more men are brought under its influence, through 
preaching and personal work, and as more women are taught by 
the Bible women, these one-sided conditions will diminish. You 
are asked, therefore, by all who suffer from the hostility of their 
own families, to maintain for the whole community the great 
evangelical departments of mission work, teaching, preaching, 
and Bible reading in the homes. 

Along the shores of India and Ceylon there are pearls in the 



IVIADUEA MISSION AND ITS WORK. 341 

oysters at the bottom of the sea. The Jesuits tell us that in the 
seventeenth century divers used to go down without any diving 
suits and gather as many oysters as they could while holding their 
breath. Sometimes they would quarrel and stab each other 
under water. If we missionaries quarreled with each other, we 
should feel as if we were turning from the work of gathering pearls 
to that of strife at the bottom of the sea. A Tamil legend says 
that once the god Siva sent a flood to overwhelm the city of Madura. 
The king thereupon ordered every one out to dam up the river, a 
certain section of the embankment being assigned to each man 
and woman. One old woman selling cakes was behindhand in 
the building of her section of the dam, when Siva himself assumed 
the form of a coolie and helped her. The king saw the back- 
wardness of the work and struck the coohe, not knowing that he 
was the god. But that blow was felt by every man and woman 
in the world. Does not this legend illustrate the univesrality of 
our heavenly Father's purposes and providence? His plans are 
for every soul of every nation, and we can work with him only 
on the basis of plans that reach out to the redemption of all man- 
kind. 

A Tamil poet says, '' Liberality grows in the flower-bed of 
abundance." We have been sustained and cheered by your 
liberality out of the abundance of your love. May you have the 
same joy in the results that is given to those on the field. 

Hear the words of a great Indian administrator, ruler of eighty 
millions of people in the presidency of Bengal, Sir Andrew Fraser, 
to the General Assembly of the United Free Church of Scotland: 
'' I have examined the matter carefully in all parts of India, and 
I rejoice in the results of mission woik. I am a Christian, I believe 
in the Lord Jesus. I believe in the religion of Christ, and I 
believe that the best thing that the people of this country can 
carry to the people of the far ends of the earth ... is the gospel 
of the Lord Jesus Christ." 



342 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 



THE BEAUTY OF SERVICE. 
Rev. Robert Ernest Hume. 

As president of the Board, you, Mr. Capen, and as secretary, 
you. Dr. Strong, have signed and delivered to me a commission 
of appointment from the American Board of Commissioners for 
Foreign Missions as a missionary to its Ma,rathi Mission. Lr^ 

But, above this, fathers and brethren, I rejoice that I am 
Robert Ernest Hume, an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ, by the 
will of God, to the people of India. 

Little did I suppose, before entering Yale, that I should ever 
stand thus before the American Board, eager to go out to India 
for a life service as a Christian missionary. Indeed, I had defi- 
nitely supposed that our family had already rendered its full share 
of service to that land. My mother, my brother, my grandmother 
were buried under the parched ground of that tropic sun. My 
grandfather, exhausted by fifteen years of unremitting labor, never 
finished his journey back to this homeland, but a wave of Indian 
Ocean rolls above his grave. With my father, an uncle, and a 
deceased aunt also missionaries to India, I considered that the 
family had already made sufficient sacrifice for the missionary 
cause. Sacrifice! Woefully meager was that conception of sacri- 
fice — a reluctant giving up of one's own desires from a sense of 
duty! When, however, I saw that '^ sacrifice," as the very deri- 
vation of the word suggests, means " a making sacred," " a ren- 
dering holy," that the whole-hearted giving of one's own life to 
the purpose of God is the only method of receiving his great divine 
life, especially when I felt the yearning of the loving Father's heart 
desiring his own holy, self- giving life for me and the greatest 
possible help to his other children, then I sought his will instead 
of my own selfish ambitions, and he made it plain that the greatest 
satisfaction of fife, both to him and to me and to all others, would 
come from continuing very closely the life-work of Jesus in service 
to the pitifully needy people of India. Ever since that enhghten- 
ment and decision in freshman year in college, it has been my 
highest and most joyous purpose to carry the Father's good news 
and life to his ignorantly groping children, my brothers and sisters, 
in India. 



THE BEAUTY OF SERVICE. 343 

So it is an abounding joy to expect that a few months hence my 
God-given helpmeet and I may be in India as representatives of 
our great; good Father, and your representatives, too, friends of 
the American Board. 

Yet, while the joy of this missionary purpose increases, the 
sense of its responsibility also increases. We are glad, exceed- 
ingly glad, to go and do this work for our Father and for you. But 
we can hardly do it merely for you; we crave to do it with you. 
Of all the things we have heard at this inspiring meeting of the 
Board and elsewhere, what has helped us the most, and what in the 
future will help us the most, is the assurance that friends, known 
and unknown, are praying for us. Friends, I beg that when you 
light your lights at the coming of darkness you give a loving 
thought to those of your brothers and sisters who will see the sun 
before you shall see it again, but who have not seen the brightness 
and joy of the Sun of Righteousness. Friends, I beg that if any 
of you lie sleepless during the hours of the night, you pray that 
just then we on the other side of the world may be very much alert 
to the will of the loving Father and to the needs of the people over 
there whom we are trying to serve. Friends, for us individually, 
and every other missionary, I speak; we crave your prayers, that 
we may be so loving, so unselfish, so holy, so sensible, so devoted, 
so Christlike, that through our lives and service many, many of 
God's children may come to trust and respond to the loving, holy 
Father, and that Christ's w^ork for the world may indeed be fully 
accomplished. 

Surely, the motto for each one of us, and for this next century 
of American foreign missions, is what has already been suggested. 
'' We can! " We — yes, you and I and other Christians, and 
more than those; we, the great God, and you and I and other 
Christians. And then, with complete devotion, with the utter 
elimination of any hint of proviso or condition, '' We will! '^ 



344 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 



CHINA AWAKENING. 
Rev. James H. Roberts, of the North China Mission. 

The haystack centenary almost coincides with China's cen- 
tenary. Next April, in Shanghai, will be held the Centennial 
Missionary Conference, celebrating the arrival of the first Prot- 
estant missionary in China. Rejoicing over a century of foreign 
missions, let us remember Robert Morrison and China. His one 
convert has become one hundred and fifty thousand, besides a 
great multitude who have joined the Church Triumphant. 

That China is awakening is well known, but who can fully 
comprehend the fact, or imagine its great results? The nation 
most wealthy in human life, becoming more intelligent and free, 
will be a powerful factor in the new world surrounding the Pacific 
Ocean. Whether it shall become Christian or agnostic is the 
problem of our time. Our duty and interest are clear. Convert 
China, bring all its forces to act in obedience in Christ, and the 
speedy conversion of the world will follow. 

'^ Wherefore he saith, Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from 
the dead, and Christ shall shine upon thee." 

Asleep in ignorance, the masses illiterate, and the ruling class 
educated chiefly in narrow lines of ancient lore; asleep in sin, 
violating their own consciences, grieving their heavenly Father, 
degraded by vice, and enslaved by superstitions; asleep in self- 
conceit, dreaming that their sages are the only lights in the moral 
firmament, and that their emperor rules the entire world; behold 
China, a giant, — to be pitied for his infirmities,' yet to be 
admired for his capabilities; to be feared, in case his powers should 
be misdirected; to be loved for Christ's sake, for the good that he 
is, and for the good that he may become; and, above all, to be 
helped by our sympathy and prayers and contributions, — this 
is the sight set before our eyes. The giant has been wakened by 
a series of commotions and by the voices of missionaries, mer- 
chants, and diplomats. He is rubbing his eyes, trying to adjust 
himself to his newly discovered environment. The whole world is 
wondering what he will do, when fully awake. Shall the waking be 
moral, as well as intellectual? Shall his strength be enhsted to 
fight the battles of Jehovah? Or shall it be spent only in material 
toil, grinding corn for the Philistines? If we can help him with the 



CHINA AWAKENING. 345 

outstretched hand of Christian brotherhood/ by heroic going and 
heroic giving, we shall see China '' arise from the dead," and 
receive a hght from Christ, which he will hold aloft like the Statue 
of Liberty, to enlighten the world. 

Encouraged by Japan's success, China has a new ambition, — to 
become strong and independent.. The first result of a recovered 
self-respect was the boycott of American goods as a protest 
against unjust treatment. " China for the Chinese," and " Imi- 
tate Japan," are the favorite watchwords. The nation does not 
want foreigners to seize its ports, dominate its pohcy, determine 
its tariff, nor exploit its mineral wealth. Railroads are becoming 
popular, but must be built by Chinese. Imitating Japan, they 
will learn what they can from foreign teachers, and then dispense 
with them. They desire only secular education, but we wish to 
give them Christian education, that the light of the glory of 
Christ may dawn upon them. 

This transitional period in Chinese history is most impressive. 
Hitherto the nation has appeared immovable as the pyramids, 
enigmatical as the sphinx; now agitation, perplexity, and a desire 
to reform are seen. The rulers in these kaleidoscopic times 
hardly know how to rule. The new education confounds the 
literary class, so that most of the teachers cannot teach. A large 
part of the brain of the nation cannot perform its function. The 
new coinage confuses business. Temples and their endowments 
are seized by the government for use as public schools. Enor- 
mous taxes are being levied for these schools, for the new army, 
and for the foreign indemnities. The opportunity to enrich them- 
selves is not neglected b}^ the officials. The cost of living increases, 
and the poor people are at their wits' end. Meantime foreign 
vices are invading China to a fearful extent. Do not these facts 
call for our sympathy, and make necessary a liberal policy in 
equipping . our Chinese missions? To do this we must each do 
his part, and strive still more earnestly to obtain a contribution 
from every church, „ and from each member of every church. 
Here are several encouraging facts: First, an imperial edict 
authorizes the Christian Sabbath as a legal holiday throughout the 
empire. Secondly, a proclamation from the viceroy of Central 
China orders that the Bible shall be studied in the public schools 
in all of his wide domain. Thirdly, the Educational Union in 
North China unites the educational work of the various missions 
on an interdenominational basis. Fourthly, the Federation of 



346 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

Churches is progressing, the final outcome of which doubtless will 
be, that denominational differences will be set aside, the native 
Christians becoming one National Church of Christ in China. 

Our hopes are encouraged by Japan's success in adopting foreign 
learning. The full awakening of the larger nation may be a long 
process, because such great numbers of people must be educated, 
but the mental quickening will have cumulative force; and, as 
the Renaissance in Europe was followed by the Reformation, so 
the present intellectual awakening in China will be followed by a 
moral regeneration, bringing immeasurable benefits to all mankind. 

The Chinese are our brothers, and the two hundred millions of 
Chinese women are our sisters. Christ will shine upon them. 
His gospel is being made known to them every night while we 
sleep. At present in North China there is urgent need of more 
workers. What grander field is there in the whole world in which 
to serve God and our fellow-men? We at home must sustain, 
with prayer and love and heroic giving, the missionaries whom 
we send or have sent from our own homes and churches. We 
must cultivate deeper spiritual life in our own hearts and a higher 
sense of our privileges and duties, and say to our Lord: " Take 
me, and all that I have, to use for thy glory. Here am I, send me; 
or at least send my offerings as a sweet incense of thanksgiving 
for thy dying love." 



CLOSING ADDRESSES. 347 



CLOSING ADDRESSES. 



FOR THE COMMITTEE OF ENTERTAINMENT. 
Mr. Clinton Q. Richmond, of North Adams. 

Mr. President, Corporate Members, and Friends of the Missionary 
Cause: I remember reading that in France, where dining and 
cooking are fine arts, when a chef has prepared a particularly 
fine dish, the guests sometimes carry him around the table 
on their shoulders. I think that that may be true, but I think 
that this is the first time that an ovation has been given to the 
man who has simply given out the rooms. In the past few 
weeks I have had a keen appreciation of the difficulties that 
must have attended the efforts of the committee in olden times 
which was charged with the " seating of the meeting-house," but 
I must say that your great good nature has prevented any of 
the heart-burnings which I am told followed those occasions. 

We have been very glad to welcome you to Berkshire, and we 
have given you the best that we have. We have welcomed you 
to our hearts and to our homes. We have even thrown in a few 
samples of Berkshire weather, including a short snow-squall, so 
that you could tell just what we enjoy here. We are very sorry 
to part with you. We should like to annex just such a body of 
representative people to the population of North Adams. We 
hope the time will come when you will come again. I can assure 
you that the present committee will not serve at the next cen- 
tennial, but, knowing North Adams and Berkshire as I do, I am 
sure you will find people here just as ready to welcome the American 
Board one hundred years from now. I can only thank you for 
this token of your appreciation, and assure you that it has been a 
pleasure to have you here, and we trust that the meetings have 
been entirely satisfactory and an inspiration to you all. 



348 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 



FOR THE METHODIST CHURCH. 

Rev. W. E. Thompson, 
Pastor of the Methodist Church, North Adams. 

Mr. President and Members of the American Board: In behalf 
of the board of trustees, and as pastor of this church, I assure you 
that it has been a great pleasure for us to extend to you, through 
your local committee, the use of this church building in which to 
hold some of the services of this great convention. 

We, as Methodists, rejoice with you because of the wonderful 
progress and the great achievements that have been brought 
about in the work of missions in the last one hundred years, and 
congratulate you on the splendid work that has been done by the 
American Board and its representatives in various mission fields. 
The influence of this great convention cannot but be world-wide, 
and we congratulate ourselves on having had an opportunity to 
come into such close relations with it. Among other things I 
have been impressed b}^ the manifest willingness and desire of your 
representatives for a federation of different denominations into 
one united work in the foreign field. In that desire I share with 
all my heart. 

For many years, after the bloody battles of our Civil War were 
ended, there still existed an invisible but actual line of separation 
between the people of the North and those of the South, that 
made impossible that unity of feehng and purpose necessary for 
the nation's greatest strength and power. Though the influences 
of commercial and social relations and rehgious work tended to 
make this dividing line less noticeable, it continued to exist, 
until that time when, in the Providence of God, .there came a call 
for the American people to take up arms and go forth to war that 
they might bring liberty, and, eventually, civilization, education, 
self-government, and Christianity to the oppressed people of the 
islands of the sea. 

Then those who had worn the blue and those who had worn the 
gray marched forth side by side, with one common purpose and 
under one common flag, — that noble emblem of liberty and 
justice, the stars and stripes, — and when those conquering heroes 
came marching home to celebrate the glorious victories which 
God gave them both on land and sea, both they and the people 



FOR THE METHODIST CHURCH. 349 

whom they represented were so cemented together by the bonds of 
their common sacrifices and their common victories that they 
could sing as we love now to sing: 

" There is no North — no South — no East — no West — ■ 
But one great land with freedom blest/' 

and one great united people, with a mind to be one great nation, 
and to make that nation the greatest in the world. 

There have been times when the citizens of the heavenly king- 
dom, divided into different denominations here on earth, have 
been at variance and open strife among themselves. Thank God 
that such things as that have so largely passed away. There are, 
however, some lines of separation which, while the}^ are becoming 
less and less distinct because of modified theology, and federation 
of work and interests among the churches, still do exist, and 
sometimes cause us to feel that we are not as nearly one as we 
ought to be. Mr. President and brethren, through the messages 
and influence of this convention there has come to the Christian 
church of America, as never before, the call to '' go into all the 
world and preach the gospel unto every creature." May God 
grant that the members of your church and the members of my 
church and the members of every other church that loves and 
exalts our Christ may answer to this call, and shoulder to shoul- 
der, in one unbroken line of battle, under one common banner, 
the blood-stained banner of the cross, and with one all consum- 
ing purpose for the glory of God and salvation of all for whom 
Christ died, march on together to the full and speedy conquest of 
the whole wide world in the name of Jesus Christ, our common 
Lord and Saviour. 



350 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 



FOR THE CONGREGATIONAL CHURCHES OF NORTH 
ADAMS AND WILLIAMSTOWN. 

Rev. Theodore E. Busfield, D.D., 
Pastor of the North Adams Congregational Church, 

President Capen, Fathers and Brethren: The hour has come for 
speeding the parting guests. I regret that I must speak this word 
of farewell alone, for my good Brother Clayton, of Williamstown, is 
detained because of a trouble with his eyes. So what I say, I say 
not simply for my own church, but also for him and for his church. 
The people of Williamstown and of North Adams have labored 
together in unity and concord in anticipation of your coming, and 
together we have shared the blessing of your presence. We have 
received a rich reward in having you in our mi^st, in our city, and 
in our homes. So much, in fact, have we enjoyed this, that we 
here and now extend to you a unanimous and most hearty invi- 
tation to celebrate the next centennial of the haystack in our city 
and in Williamstown. 

These days have been days upon the mountain tops. Our 
.hearts have been deeply moved, and our spirits have been uplifted. 
These have indeed been great meetings. Many elements have 
conspired to make them great. There has been the inspiration of 
numbers; there has been the wise use of noble sentiment. As we 
sat the other afternoon in the beautiful sunshine after the rain in 
Mission Park, under the same skies and looking upon the same scenes 
and talking upon the same themes as those young men one hun- 
dred years ago, no heart could fail to be stirred to its very depths. 
We have had a splendid program. All of the meetings have 
rung true. The prayers and the addresses from beginning to end 
have all been inspirational. We have had a fine report brought 
to our notice by the officers of the Board. We have been told 
of the greatest contributions in the entire history of this great 
organization, and the lifting of the burdensome debt. The 
notable thank-offering, the other afternoon, filled us with grati- 
tude. All these things have labored together to make these meet- 
ings exceptional for influence and interest. 

And these meetings have been in a great cause and for a great 
work. One of the speakers, the other morning, in the splendid 



FOR THE CONGREGATIONAL CHURCHES. 351 

chapel at Williamstown, — I think it was President Tucker, — 
told us, what we all know, that we are becoming too much occupied 
with the trivial and with the commonplace in life; but there has 
been nothing commonplace and nothing trivial in this great work, 
the great work of evangelizing the whole world and bringing it to 
the feet of our Master. This work is a work which has carried 
healing and help and light and life and salvation to thousands and 
tens of thousands of individuals. It is a work which is uplifting 
and civilizing nations, and work also which is making the churches 
at home more efficient. We all believe that the American Board 
is the most valuable asset of Congregationalism. It is the expres- 
sion of the loftiest and the most Christian altruism, and we are to 
support with ever-increasing interest and efficiency the Board in 
its world-wide work for Christ. 

This great work, as it has been presented so finely and so sweetl}^ 
and so beautifully, by men and women from the home field and 
from the foreign field, has revealed to us the great things that still 
confront us. The fields abroad are ripe for the harvesters, but 
the laborers are few. Missionaries are breaking down; missions 
are in need of reenforcement; hundreds of Macedonian men are 
uttering the old Macedonian cry, '' Come over and help us." And 
then, great as are the needs across the seas, how great are the 
needs of the Board right here, because of the apathy and the 
indifference and the unconcern and the lack of missionary spirit 
on the part of American Christians. It has seemed to me, as I 
have sat here and listened to the reports, as if the executive force 
of the Board was like two men, — the foreign secretary facing the 
needs upon the foreign fields, and the home secretary facing the 
great needs caused b}^ apathy upon the home field, and they 
stand back to back endeavoring to awaken Christians to satisfy 
these needs in the great wide world. We have here on the plat- 
form those who are to reenf orce the exertions of Dr. Barton, and 
it is for us all, pastors and others, to labor with more of zeal and 
with more of Christian spirit that we may second our home secre- 
tary. Dr. Patton, in his great work. 

We have had great meetings, in the interests of a great work, 
which have revealed to us great needs, and all this has been for a 
great Master. It has been gratifying indeed to observe that from 
the very first note of this anniversary our Lord Jesus Christ has 
been exalted. We have learned of an altered emphasis, but we 
have not learned of a lessened emphasis, on the motives for foreign 



352 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

missions. We have had business transacted here, but there has 
been a beautiful blending of business with spirituality. Your 
representatives have not been slothful in business, and they have 
been fervent in spirit, serving the Lord. The great, magnificent, 
everlasting realities of the spiritual world have been emphasized 
on this platform, and it has all been done for the sake and for the 
glory of our Master. 

It has been exceedingly gratifying to learn also of great results. 
There have been numerous and notable victories. When we think 
of the great achievements in medical missions, when we think of 
the vast output of the schools, the colleges, and the theological 
seminaries of the Board, when we think of the thousands that have 
been won to the new life which is divine, when we think of the 
leaven which is working here and there in the twenty missions of 
the Board and leavening communities and countries with Chris- 
tian truth, we are impressed with the large results of almost one 
hundred years of effort. The other afternoon, and at other times 
since, as we have looked upon these men who have come here in 
various costumes and from different climes, and who have told 
with gratitude in heart and voice of the great work which the 
Board has done for them and for others, we have had before us the 
visible evidences of the success which our great organization, under 
God, has achieved. 

And now the time has come for saying farewell, and I say it with 
the hope and with the prayer that you who go and we who remain 
may all labor together as fellow- workers with God, as w^e have 
never labored before, with utmost faith and hope and love, with 
utmost courage, and with the abiding presence of Him who hath 
all power in heaven and on earth, that we may spread abroad the 
glory of His name. And then, some time, the lifting mists and 
the vanishing darkness will all be gone, and the whole round world 
will roll into light. 



CLOSING ADDRESS. 353 



CLOSING ADDRESS. 

Hon. Samuel B. Capen, LL.D. 

I WISH it were possible for me, at this closing moment, to respond 
more fitly to these parting words of our brethren. The length of 
the days and the shortness of the nights, the past week, have not 
allowed the best preparation for such a service, but I can speak 
in behalf of the American Board, I am sure, out of the fullness of 
my heart, our gratitude to you, gentlemen, and to those whom 
you represent, for all you have done for us. Some of us have 
known by a similar experience of the weeks and the months which 
are required for preparation for a meeting of this kind. Some of 
us know what a sacrifice many of the people of Wilhamstown and 
North Adams have made. While they have been serving us, 
they must necessarily have been detained in their homes or at the 
church, shut out from all these meetings and all this inspiration. 
We are glad to recognize it today, and are grateful for the service. 
From the time we came until this moment the various committees 
have been most careful and thoughtful in every possible way to 
make our stay with you happy. You have indeed opened your 
hearts as well as your homes and your churches to us, ~ and for 
it all we are most grateful. 

There has been one feature of this meeting which has been 
peculiarly beautiful, I think, and that is the oneness which we 
have seen illustrated here. We have been holding our centennial 
meeting in a Methodist church, we have had the use of the Baptist 
church near by, we have had official greetings from the United 
Brethren and from the Methodist Protestants and from the 
Armenian Church, last night we were led in prayer by our Baptist 
brother, and this morning we were led in prayer by this honored 
brother of the Presbyterian Church. Is it not suggestive of how 
near we are getting together? Barriers are down abroad, and 
they are going to be lowered at home as we go about our common 
work. 

This has been the greatest meeting, I think we must say, in the 
history of the Board. And why has it been the greatest? I 
believe we began right, — we began far back in prayer. Dr. 
Patton told us of the journey to Seattle and of the prayer meeting 
on the train. The million-dollar campaign was mapped out on 



354 THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL. 

that train, and from that hour to this the churches have been 
praying for the blessing of Almighty God upon this meeting. I 
am not forgetting the services which our secretaries and others 
have rendered to us. I am not forgetting the generous help of 
one of our honored friends who, at the last minute, turned a lot 
of slow assets, which we had not counted in because they were so 
slow, into the quickest sort of an asset, — cash, and helped us out 
in our last emergency. I am not forgetting these things, but 
our brother's heart, and the hearts of all others who have helped 
in this campaign, have been touched by the Spirit of God, we 
believe, in answer to prayer. We have seen it and felt it all 
through these meetings. Several hundred persons meeting in 
that sunrise prayer meeting at Williamstown is one indication, 
and the most touching thing that I have heard of in connection 
with these meetings was the fact that all day long around the 
Haystack Monument little groups of people came and went and 
stayed long enough to have a prayer meeting together. Think 
of the men and women who are not here, but have been praying 
for this meeting. I heard yesterday afternoon from our honored 
former vice-president, Mr. Blatchford. He sent a message in 
which he said, ''In an hour and an half that blessed meeting is 
going to begin." We heard this morning from Mayor Jones, of 
Minneapolis, that he had made all his plans for months previous 
to be here, and then, because of the necessities upon him in fight- 
ing not only a battle for righteousness in Minneapolis, but a battle 
for righteousness for us all, he stayed away from this meeting. 
And do you not think that Mr. Blatchford and Mr. Jones, and 
those others who could not come here, have been praying for us? 
We have felt the power of their prayers all through these meetings. 
So I say this has been the greatest meeting in our history, because 
we began right in prayer, and we have continued in prayer, and 
we shall end in prayer. 

What a contrast to one hundred years ago ! Those young men 
were ridiculed then, and today we honor these missionaries. We 
have seen these native Christians with our own eyes, and we know 
now the result of what is going on in the foreign field. We are 
ready for the words of Dr. Endicott Peabody, the head of the 
famous Groton School, when he said, a short time ago, " Missions 
are the grandest work in the world, and the missionaries are the 
heroes of our times." We are ready for his further statement, 
made a few days ago, as I understand, to his class of boys, " Boys, 



CLOSING ADDRESS. 355 

I would rather 3^ou would each one be a foreign missionary than 
president of the United States.'^ When a man like Dr. Peabody, 
in a position like that, is teaching the coming generation such 
truths, we see how great is the change and the contrast between 
the ridicule and the sneer of one hundred years ago and the glory 
of the coming of the kingdom of God now. 

The men of the haystack had a great vision, and we see some- 
thing of the results of their dream. We have heard of it on this 
platform. We know what has been done. We need a vision — a 
vision of the mighty Master who is doing all the work. May we 
not go from here remembering that for one hundred years we have 
been putting in the foundations? And it has been slow work, 
some of it. Now we are going to build the superstructure, and the 
work is going more rapidly. At the present pace we can accom- 
plish it in fifty years. That is not enough; we want to quicken 
the step and do it in twenty-five years. And we can do it, if we 
will only, here and now, as in the sight of Almighty God, go and 
consecrate ourselves, our time, our talents, our means, all we 
have, as the men of the haystack consecrated themselves. I was 
thinking, this morning, in the quiet of my room, why not have a 
motto for the next hundred years? Samuel J. Mills, of Massa- 
chusetts, gave it a hundred years ago,— '' We can do it if we will." 
Henry Bissell, of India, — the first country to which the American 
Board sent its missionaries, — gave us the motto for the new 
century last night. The words have already been spoken here 
by our honored brother bearing the name of Hume, and in the 
report of the committee. Let us leave out the " and " and put 
it as Bissell put it, — " We can, we will! '' Friends, will you say 
it over after me, as in the sight of God? " We can, we will! " 

May God help us to keep our pledge! Amen. 



INDICES. 



SPEAKERS. 



Abbott, Rev. Lyman, D.D., 262. 

Akana, Akaiko, of Hawaii, 128. 

Barton, Jiev. James L., D.D., Secre- 
tary of the Foreign Department, 
18, 289. 

Beach, Prof. Harlan P., of Yale Uni- 
versity, 200. 

Bell, Bishop William M., D.D., of the 
United Brethren, 223. 

Bissell, Rev. Henry G., of Ahmed- 
nagar, India, 297. 

Bridgman, Rev. Frederick B., of the 
South African Mission, 319. 

BrowTi, Rev, Arthur Judson, D.D., 
Secretary of the Presbyterian 
Board of Foreign Missions, New 
York, 110. 

Busfield, Rev. Theodore E., D.D., 
Pastor of the North Adams Con- 
gregational Church, 350. 

Calkins, Rev. Ra^^mond, of Portland, 
Me., Chairman of the Committee 
on the Report of the Foreign 
Department, 234, 235. 

Capen, Hon. Samuel B., LL.D., Presi- 
dent of the American Board, 9, 66, 
108, 353. 

Chamberlain, Rev. Oscar M., of 
Turkej^ 133. 

Chandler, Rev. John S., of Madura, 
India, 335. 

Channon, Rev. Irving M., of Micro- 
nesia, 43. 

Clark, Rev. Francis E., D.D., Presi- 
dent of the United Society of Chris- 
tian Endeavor, 185. 

Cobb, Rev. Henry Evertson, D.D., 
Pastor of the Collegiate Church, 
New York, 179. 

Creegan, Rev. C. C, D.D., 268. 



Currie, Rev. Walter T., of the West 

Central Africa Mission, 245. 
Da^'is, Joshua W., Chairman of the 

Committee on the Treasurer's 

Report, 255. 
Day, Rev. Charles O., D.D., President 

of Andover Theological Seminary, 

210. 
Denison, Rev. John Hopkins, Pastor 

of Central Congregational Church, 

Boston, 84. 
Dodd, Rev. William S., M.D., of 

the Western Turkey Mission, 39, 

150. 
Eaton, Rev. Edward D., D.D., 316. 
E^\-ing, Rev. G. H., read report of 

Committee on Report of the 

Foreign Department, 234. 
Fei Chi Hao, of China, a Student at 

Yale University, 129, 
Ford, Hon. Marshall R., Mayor of 

North Adams, 8. 
Gates, Rev. George A., D.D., Presi- 
dent of Pomona College, Clare- 

mont, Cal., 45. 
Gumede, Stephen ka Ndunge, of 

South Africa, a graduate of Wilber- 

force University, Ohio, and now 

a student at the University of 

Michigan, 135. 
Hicks, Mr. HaiT}' Wade, Associate 

Secretary of the American Board, 

33. 
Hilhs, Rev. Newell Dwight, D.D., 

Pastor of Plymouth Congregational 

Church, Brookh-n, 94. 
Hitchcock, Rev."^ A. N., Ph.D., 

Chicago, 111., District Secretary for 

the Interior, 273. 
Hiwale, Arnold Sidobe, of India, 124. 



358 



INDICES. 



Hopkins, Rev, Henry, D.D., Presi- 
dent of Williams College, 63. 

Hume, Rev. Robert Ernest, 342. 

Hyde, Rev. William DeWitt, D.D., 
President of Bowdoin College, 68. 

Judson, Rev. Edward, D.D., Pastor 
of Memorial Baptist Church, New 
York, 78. 

King, Rev. Henry C, D.D., President 
of Oberlin College, 163. 

Kinnear, Rev. H. N., M.D., of China, 
324. 

Kulasinghe, Henry M. Hoisington, of 
Ceylon, 127. 

K'ung, H. H., of China, a graduate of 
Oberlin College, and now a gradu- 
ate* student at Yale University, 
131. 

Manavian, Rev. G. M., the Moderator 
of the Armenian Evangelical Alli- 
ance of America, 177. 

McLaughlin, Rev. R. W., D.D., of 
Grand Rapids, Mich., Chairman 
of the Committee on the Report 
of the Home Department, 250, 
252. 

Moore, Rev. Edward C, D.D., of 
Harvard University, Chairman of 
the Prudential Committee of the 
American Board, 232. 

Mott, Mr. John R., Chairman of the 
Executive Committee of the Stu- 
dent Volunteer Movement, and 
General Secretary of the World's 
Student Christian Federation, 187. 

Ogburn, Rev. T. J., D.D., of the 
Methodist Protestants, 227. 

Patton, Rev. Cornelius H., D.D., Sec- 
retary of the Home Department 
of the American Board, 14. 

Pentecost, Rev. George F., D.D., 221. 



Ponce, Senor Frederic R., Professor 
in Colegio Internacional, Guada- 
lajara, Mexico, 142. 

Reitinger, Rev. PhiUp, of Bohemia, 
139. 

Richmond, Mr. Clinton Q., of North 
Adams, 347. 

Roberts, Rev. James H., of the North 
China Mission, 344. 

Sailer, Mr. T. H. P., Ph.D., Educa-. 
tional Secretary of the Presby- 
terian Board of Foreign Missions, 
60. 

Sato, Rev. S., of Japan, and of Ober- 
lin Theological Seminary, 138. 

Tenney, Rev. H. Melville, of Berke- 
ley, Cal., District Secretar}^ for the 
Pacific Coast, 277. 

Tewksbury, Rev. Elwood G., a mis- 
sionary at Tung Chou, North 
China, 328. 

Thompson, Rev. W. E., Pastor of the 
Methodist Church, North Adams, 
348. 

Trowbridge, Rev. Stephen Van Rens- 
selaer, formerly Assistant Pastor 
to Rev. S. Parkes Cadman, Brook- 
lyn, N. Y., and now under appoint- 
ment of the American Board to go 
to Aintab, Turkey, 160. 

Tucker, Rev. William J., D.D., Presi- 
dent of Dartmouth College, 72. 

Wiggin, Mr. Frank H., Treasurer of 
the American Board, 11. 

Wishard, Mr. Luther D., 143. 

Zumbro, President William M., of 
Pasumalai College, Madura, India, 
155. 

Zwemer, Rev. Samuel M., D.D,, of 
Arabia, a missionary of the Re- 
formed Church, 104, 281. 



INDICES. 359 



TITLES OF ADDRESSED 



American College, Madura, The, and the Conquest of an Empire. President 
WiUiam M. Zumbro, of Pasumalai College, Madura, 155. 
The Needs of India, 155; Conditions in India, 157. 
Beauty of Service, The. Rev. Robert Ernest Hume, 342. 
Brief Addresses by Native Christians from the Foreign ^Mission Fields, 124. 
China ATvakening. Rev. James H. Roberts, of the North China ^lission, 344. 
Changes within the Century- in Foreign ]\IissionarA- Theory and Practice. 
Rev. Henrs- C. King, D.D., President of OberHn CoUege, 163. 

Prevailing Motive, 163; Broad Methods, 164; Applied Christian Princi- 
ples, 167; Certain Growing Con^-ictions, 170; The Need, 172; Our 
Attitude, 175; The Methods, 176. 
Christian Mssions in Turkey. Rev. Stephen Van Rensselaer Trowbridge, 
formerly Assistant Pastor to Rev. S. Parkes Cadman, of Brooklyn, N. Y., 
now under Appointment of the American Board to go to Aintab, Turkey, 
160. 
Closing Addresses : 

(a) For the Committee of Entertainment. Mr. Clinton Q. Richmond, of 

North Adams, 347. 

(b) For the Methodist Church. Rev. W. E. Thompson, Pastor of the 

Methodist Church, North Adams, 348.- 

(c) For the Congregational Churches of North Adams and Williamstown. 

Rev. Theodore E. Busfield, D.D., Pastor of the North Adams Con- 
gregational Church, 350. 

(d) Hon. Samuel B. Capen, LL.D., 353. 

Discussion as to the Future PoUc}' of the Board at Home. 
(a) Rev. Lyman Abbott, D.D.. 262. 

Three Postulates. 263; Practical Methods, 264; A Humanitarian Age, 

266. 
(6) Rev. C. C. Creegan, D.D., 268. 

(c) Rev. A. N. Hitchcock, Ph.D., Chicago, 111., District Secretary for the 

Interior, 273. 

(d) Rev. H. Meh-ille Tenney, Berkeley, Cal., District Secretary- for the 

Pacific Coast, 277. 
E^■angeUzation, The, of the Mohammedan World in this Generation. Rev. 
Samuel M. Zwemer, D.D., of Arabia, a Missionary of the Reformed Church, 
281. 

The Vast Proportions of the Undertaking, 281; The Necessity of this 
Undertakmg. 283; The Possibihty of this Undertaking, 285; The 
Urgency of this Undertaking, 287. 
Evangehzation, The, of the World, the Essential Condition of American Chris- 
tianity. Rev. Edward Judson, D.D., Pastor of Memorial Baptist Church, 
New York, 78. 



360 INDICES. 

Future, The, of Missionary Work. Rev. Arthur Judson Bromi, D.D., Secre- 
tary of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, New York, 110. 

Greetings : 

(a) From the United Brethren. Bishop WilHam M. Bell, D.D., 223. 
(6) From the Methodist Protestants. Rev. T. J. Ogburn, D.D., 227. 

(c) From Arnold Sidohe Hiwale, of India, 124. 

(d) From Henry M. Hoisington Kulasinghe, of Ceylon, 127. 

(e) From Fei Chi Hao, of China, a student at Yale University, 129. 

(/) From H. H. K'ung, of China, a graduate of Oberlin College, and now a 

graduate student at Yale University, 131. 
(g) From Rev. Oscar M. Chamberlain, of Turkey, 133. 
(h) From Stephen ka Ndunge Gumede, of South Africa, a graduate of 
Wilberforce University, Ohio, and now a student at the University 
of Michigan, 135. 
(i) From Rev. S. Sato, of Japan, and of Oberlin Theological Seminary, 138. 
(;') From Rev. Philip Reitinger, of Bohemia, 139. 

(k) From Sefior Frederic R. Ponce, Professor in Colegio Intemacional, 
Guadalajara, Mexico, 142. 
Haystack Men in the Ministry. Rev. Charles O. Day, D.D., President of 

Andover Theological Seminary, 210. 
Hero, The, of the Haystack: An Illustrated Lecture. Rev. Thomas C. 

Richards, Williams, '87, Pastor at Warren, Mass., 214. 
Hospital, The, in Cesarea. Rev. William S. Dodd, M.D,, of Western Turkey, 

150. 
How the Gospel Works among the Zulus. Rev. Frederick B. Bridgman, of 
the South African Mission, 319. 

Results of the Gospel, 320; Outlook for the Future, 322. 
In Memory of Rev. Judson Smith, D.D. Rev. Edward D. Eaton, D.D., 316. 
India's Millions for Christ. Rev. Henry G. Bissell, of Ahmednagar, India, 297. 
Social Life of India, 297 ; Religious Life of India, 299 ; Mohammedanism, 
300; Hinduism, 301; Controlling Ideas, 302; Field of the Marathi 
Mission, 304; Attitude of the Natives of India, 306; Our Opportunity 
and Duty, 308; A Message, 309. 
Kind, The, of Young Men and Women Needed for the Mission Field. Rev. 
Francis E. Clark, D.D., President of the United Society of Christian 
Endeavor, 185. 
Madura Mission, The, and Its Work. Rev. John S. Chandler, 335. 
Memorial of the Armenian Evangelical Alliance of America to the Directors 
and Members of the American Board. Rev. G. M. Manavian, the Mod- 
erator of the Alliance, 177. 
Men of the Haystack the Forerunners of the Student Volunteer Movement. 

Mr. Luther D. Wishard, 143. 
Message of Akaiko Akana, of Hawaii, 128. 

Message, The, of the Haystack Men to the Church of Toda3^ Rev. Henry 
Evertson Cobb, D.D., Pastor of the Collegiate Church, New York, 179. 
Forgotten Essentials, 179; Confidence and Consecration, 181; Need of 
Prayer, 183. 
Missionary Century, A. Rev. William J. Tucker, D.D., President of Dart- 
mouth College, 72. 



INDICES. 361 

Missionary Challenge, The, to the Students of this Generation. Prof. Harlan 
P. Beach, of Yale University, 200. 

The QuaHfications, 200; Demands of the Fields, 202; The Missionary 
Challenge, 204; Exceeding Great Reward, 207. 
Mission Study Class Methods: A Summary. T. H. P. Sailer, Ph.D., Edu- 
cational Secretary of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, 60. 
Moslems in Turkey. Rev. James L. Barton, D.D., Secretary of the Foreign 
Department, 289. 

Significant Facts in the Turkey Field, 290; Christian Missions Are Strongly 
Intrenched in the Turkish Empire, 292; Preparations for Advance, 293; 
Ways of Advancing, 295. 
New Motives and Changed Purposes in Missions. Rev. John Hopkins Deni- 
son. Pastor of Central Congregational Church, Boston, 84. 

International Justice, 85; Cosmopolitan Responsibility, 87; The Chris- 
tian Motive, 88; The Aim of Missions, 90; The Test of Missions, 
92. 
New Premises, The, and the Old Conclusions, Rev. William DeWitt Hyde, 
D.D., President of Bowdoin College, 68. 

The Old and the New, 68; An Efficient Instrument, 70. 
Opening Address (in Mission Park Service). Hon. Samuel B. Capen, LL.D., 

President of the American Board, 108. 
Opening Address (of Thursday Morning). Rev. George F. Pentecost, D.D., 

221. 
Plea, A, for the Medical Work in China. Rev. H. N. Kinnear, M.D., 324. 
Present Opportunity in Micronesia. Rev. Irving M. Channon, 43. 
Price, The, of Missionary Success: A Summary. Rev. Samuel M. Zwemer, 

D.D., of Arabia, 104. 
Reports of 

(a) The Treasurer, Frank H. Wiggin (Extracts from), 11. 
(6) The Home Secretary, Rev. Cornelius H. Patton, D.D. (Extracts from), 
14. 
Death of Secretary Smith, 14; Appointment of Missionaries, 14; Need of 
Candidates, 15; The Milhon-Dollar Campaign, 15; The Support of 
Higher Educational Institutions, 16; In Conclusion, 17. 

(c) The Foreign Secretarj'-, Rev. James L. Barton, D.D. (Extracts from), 18. 
Political Outlook and Changes, 18; Cooperation, 21; Turkey, 22; India 
and Ceylon, 23; China, 24; Japan, 27; Africa, 29; Pacific Islands, 30 j 
Papal Lands, 31; Conclusion, 32. 

(d) Department for Young People and Education (Extracts from). Mr. 

Harry Wade Hicks, 33. 
Field Work, 33 ; Sale of Literature — Mission Study, 34; The Station 
Plan, 35; Christian Endeavor Societies, 36; Sunday-Schools, 36; 
Young Men, 37; Student Cooperation, 37. 

(e) The Committee on the Report of the Foreign Department, Rev. Ray- 

mond Calkins, Chairman. Read by Rev. G. H. Ewing, 234. 

(/) The Committee on the Report of the Home Department. Rev. R. W. 
McLaughlin, D.D., Chairman, 250. 

(g) The Committee on the Treasurer's Report. Joshua W. Davis, Chair- 
man, 255. 



362 INDICES. 

Response to the Address of Welcome by Mayor Ford. Hon. Samuel B. 

Capen, LL.D., President of the American Board, 9. 
Response to the Address of Welcome by President Hopkins. Hon. Samuel B. 

Capen, LL.D., President of the American Board, 66. 
Response to the Greetings from the United Brethren and the Methodist 
Protestants. Rev. Edward C. Moore, D.D., of Harvard University, Chair- 
man of the Prudential Committee of the American Board, 232. 
Rising Tide, The. Rev. William S. Dodd, M.D., of the Western Turkey 

Mission, 39. 
Sermon, The Annual. Rev. George A. Gates, D.D., President of Pomona 
College, Claremont, Cal., 45. 

" The Love of Christ Constraineth Us," 45; Contributions to Modem Life, 
47; New World-Visions, 49; Things that Put Us to Shame, 51; The 
Passion of the Cross, 53. 
Significance, The, of this Anniversary. Rev. Newell Dwight Hillis, D.D., 
Pastor of Plymouth Congregational Church, Brooklyn, N. Y., 94. 

Invisible Forces, 94; Concrete Examples, 96; Influence on Commerce, 

98; The Heroism of Foreign Missions, 99; An Appeal to Young Men, 

101. . 

Vision, The, of the Haystack Realized. Mr. John R. Mott, Chairman of the 

Executive Committee of the Student Volunteer Movement, and General 

Secretary of the World's Student Christian Federation, 187. 

Students' Organizations, 188; Student Volunteers, 190; Missionary 
Movements, 192; World Evangelization, 194; Missionary Expansion, 
197. 
Welcome, Address of. Marshall R. Ford, Mayor of North Adams, 8. 
Welcome, Address of. Rev. Henry Hopkins, D.D., President of Williams 

College, 63. 
West Central Africa Mission, The, Rev. Walter T. Currie, 245. 
Work, The, and the Missionary. Rev. Elwood G. Tewksbury, Missionary at 
Tung-Chou, North China, 328. 

Conditions of Work in North China, 329; Points to be Emphasized, 332. 
Work, The, of the Foreign Department. Rev. Raymond Calkins, of Portland, 
Me., 235. 

Supreme Purpose of Missions, 235; Use of Native Agencies, 237; A Well- 
Roimded Gospel, 239; Cooperation, 241; Native Christian Churches, 
242. 
Work, The, of the Home Department. Rev. R. W. McLaughlin, of Grand 
Rapids, Mich., 252. 



INDICES. 363 



MISSION LANDS REFERRED TO. 



Africa. 

Political Outlook and Changes in, 19. 
Report of American Board Missions in, 29, 30. 

Greeting from Stephen ka Ndunga Gumede, of South Africa, 135-138. 
The West Central Africa Mission. By Rev. Walter T. Currie, 245-249. 
How the Gospel Works among the Zulus. By Rev. Frederick B. Bridg- 
man, of the South Africa Mission, 319-323. 

Armenia. 

Memorial of the Armenian Evangelical Alliance of America to the Directors 
and Members of the American Board, 177-178. 

Bohemia. 

Greeting from Rev. Philip Reitinger, of Bohemia, 139-141. 

Ceylon. (See India and Ceylon.) 

China. 

PoUtical Outlook and Changes in, 20-21. 

Cooperation in, 22. 

Reports of American Board Mission in, 24-27. 

Greeting from Fei Chi Hao, of China, 129-131. 

Greetmg from H. H. K'ung, of China, 131-133. 

A Plea for the Medical Work in. Rev. H. N. Kinnear, M.D., 324-327. 

The Work and the Missionary. Rev. El wood G. Tewksbury, missionary at 

Tung Chou, North China, 328-334. 
China Awakening. Rev. James H. Roberts, of the North China Mission, 

344-346. 

Hawaii. 

Message of Akaiko Akana, of Hawaii, 128-129. 

India and Ceylon. 
Cooperation in, 22. 

Report of American Board Missions in, 23-24. 
Greetings from Arnold Sidobe Hiwale, of India, 124-126. 
Greetings from Henry M. Hoisington Kidasinghe, of Ceylon 127-128. 
The American College, Madura, and the Conquest of an Empire. President 

William M. Zumbro, of Pasimialai College, Madura, 155-159. 
. India's MiUions for Christ. Rev. Henry G. Bissell, of Ahmednagar, 297-309. 
A Message from American Board Missionaries in India, 309-310. 
A Mission from Indian Christians, 310. 

The Madura Mission and Its Work. Rev. John S. Chandler, 335-341. 
The Beauty of Service. Rev. Robert Ernest Hume, 342-343. 



364 INDICES. 

Japan, 

Political Outlook and Changes in, 20. 
Report of American Board Missions in, 27-29. 
Greetings from Rev. S. Sato, of Japan, 138-139. 

Mexico. 

Greeting from Senor Frederic R. Ponce, Professor in Colegio Internacional, 
of Guadalajara, Mexico, 142. 

Micronesia, 

Cooperation in, 21 . • 

Present Opportunity in. Rev, Irving M. Channon, 43-44. ] 

Mohammedan Lands. 

The Evangelization of the Mohammedan World in this Generation. Rev. 

Samuel M. Zwemer, D.D., of Arabia, 281-288. 
Moslems in Turkey. Rev. James L. Barton, D.D,, 289-296. 

Pacific Islands. 

Report of American Board Missions in, 30-31. 

Papal Lands. 

Report of American Board Missions in, 31-32, 

Persia. ' 

Political Outlook and Changes in, 18, 

Russia. 

Political Outlook and Changes in, and Relation of the American Board to, 
19. 

Turkey. 

Political Outlook and Changes in, 18, 

Cooperation in, 21, 

Report of American Board Missions in, 22, 23. 

The Rising Tide. Rev. William §. Dodd, M.D., of the Western Turkey 

Mission, 39-42. 
Greeting from Rev. Oscar M. Chamberlain, of Turkey, 133-135. 
The Hospital in Cesarea. Rev. William S. Dodd, M.D., of Western Turkey, 

150-154. 
Christian Missions in Turkey. Rev. Stephen Van Rensselaer Trowbridge, 

under appointment to Aintab, Turkey, 160-162. 
Moslems in Turkey. Rev. James L. Barton, D.D., 289-296. 



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